Jewel is a love song for life, at times unrequited but a love song nonetheless, the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of modern life are mirrored from the degradation of unemployment to the scandalous indifference of the Catholic Church to its own misdemeanors or the hypocrisy of the Western world in its condemnation of the ways of others. There are myriad poems of youth and romance, of humor and age, and death and war: a man trying to make sense of himself in a troubled world.