I am not a poet. But I love to write. I love to chronicle events in my life, to write about them in hopes of making more sense of them.
The poems in this volume span twenty years. I chose poems that reflect the arc of my life during that time. These are not all good poems. I know that. But each, I hope, in its own way tells a story of my thoughts and feelings as I grappled with fierce changes in my life.
What I have noticed as I have read these again is how much they mirror the art that I was making during this time. All the intense, often overwrought language and images, had visual bedfellows in the painting, sculpture and prints I was creating over these two decades. Physics, philosophy, astronomy, all found their way into my work. But so did flames and floods, stars and seas, the battle between heart and mind, desire and responsibility, the longing for something I struggled to describe.
Mostly, these are letters to myself. I put them together here to have a place for them, to give them a good home.