I’ve always loved writing poetry; but as life would have it, although I wrote a great deal in earlier years and thought I might write professionally and teach as well; life had other plans and took me elsewhere for forty five years.

But I never stopped writing for my own pleasure. I couldn’t have. When a poem starts inside me, I have to give myself up to it. If I didn’t, it would be lost. I am the only one who can hear its call and give it life, so it’s a responsibility. The whole process is a sort of magical compulsion or quasi-biological urge which, once started, demands attention and expression. Anything might be the spark, but once begun the intensity slowly but surely takes over and becomes of prime importance in one’s days.

Much like the birth of a child, I imagine, it is a labor not so much of duration, but one of determination and love. It has its own time and call to be. It has its own incipient need. And from that need there forms a relationship, a bond between the poem and poet which is actually a give and take of sorts with dramatic activity as much from within the nascent form being created as from without it in my conscious mind. I jot it down at midnight. I crawl back into bed. Another line manifests. I get up again to put it to paper. Up and down. Embryonic cells multiply on the page.

To my great surprise and happiness, I now seem to be finding my home in writing poetry once again….This first book is as much a gift to myself as to those I love. I hope it will bring pleasure, a reflective moment or two, and allow others to share in my joy of wordcraft.

A special “Thank You” to Caro Macpherson whose sharp insights and sensitive reading of these writings have helped me find a truer voice and Alice Caroline Jue who proofread; goddess at the wheel.

San Francisco, 2018