Dangerous Instincts is a collection of poems unified thematically by recurring and interstitial questions of the wilderness, the natural sciences - particularly astrophysics - the occult, and the mythic universe. These poems explore the mystical implications of the natural world and its meaning in the aesthetic consciousness, particularly in a highly secular century. Implied is the poet’s selfdiscovery and search for the divine. The collection emerges, not simply as interpretation, but a means of coming to terms with the fear of and compulsion to question the universe, and through those questions find illumination in the ordinariness of lived life and in the mystery and magic of complex phenomena. As a whole, the work is largely lyrical; occasionally it calls upon forms such as the villanelle and ekphrasis as deliberate formal poetic experiments. Sometimes the images are familiar recreations of creation myths and forest fires, and sometimes they range into as private and esoteric a realm as occult rituals, Scottish fairytale, and quantum entanglement. Dangerous Instincts is divided into five sections that explore the physical realm in terms of distances: from outward to inward, from heights to depths, and from beyond the speaker’s understanding to intrinsically self-reflexive poems written to amplify my notion that at the heart of poetry is myth.