In "The Sound of Water" Jim Garrett invites the reader to join him beside the sea to reflect on growing up, fathers and sons, loss and love, and aging. In "at the corner of ocean and beach," "Enough Beach, Enough Time," "Sandcastle," and "Surfcaster," he brings his reader up to the water's edge, sometimes looking for turtles in "Turtle-Hunting" and "A History of Turtles" and sometimes trying to swim in "The Surprising Signs of Drowning" and "Learning to Swim at 56." In "Four Tides," "Snow at the Beach," "Leaving Lookout," "The Sea Urchin," and "Wings," Garrett reflects on the storms of loss we all live through. His father, baseball, and Bruce Springsteen join Garrett close to water in poems as varied as "In the Batting Cages, Asbury Park, New Jersey, August 16, 1958," "Opening Day at Ray Chapman's Grave," "Speed Limits," and "Driving to the Jersey Shore from Anywhere, U.S.A." More than water flows through the poems of Jim Garrett's "The Sound of Water."