When we lived in Illinois, I spent a lot of time by a neighborhood pond.  I was teaching full-time in Chicago then, and gradually realizing it was time to return to Wisconsin.  I thought I was going to be a full-time writer.  Instead there were health challenges, but they made me a better caregiver for my mother.  Many people helped her and she blessed them all.

The world continued on, and I still feel like I am catching up in some ways.   But I don’t mind this anymore.  And now I am writing almost every day and well within the quiet life that is right for me now.

Thank you for your kind reading.  I enjoy your good blogs as well–photography, drawings, mixed media art, science classes (never too old to try and learn things that are harder for me), bird-watching, meditations about creativity, and of course poetry and many essays.  America, Canada, and other countries. I had penpals from different places in the world when I was growing up too.

The following poem was published first in MIDWEST POETRY REVIEW, in 1994.  Sometimes this seems like yesterday, and sometimes ages ago.

PSALM 20

There are days
when everything seems a metaphor…
I persist with a bottle of salad dressing
that won’t open
Touch the childhood scar on my forehead
now blended with a wrinkle
Am comforted by cards and letters
sent at just the right time
Gaze at the blue heron who stayed
long into the Fall
And marvel at the migrating monarchs
on their way.

I ponder the limits of persistence
for the heron left one day
And feel wounds aging into wisdom
although scars do stay
Recognize “help from the sanctuary”
and read Psalm 20 once again
In wonder at these days when
everything seems a metaphor…

New dreams were growing all along
And would be tested true
I finally flew to embrace them too.

* * *

Update, October 16, 2012:  Yesterday I also posted “Psalm 20” on My Journal Poems.  http://www.journalpoems.wordpress.com.