My poetry has been and remains an important part of who I am. Writing poetry is how I cope with the traumatic parts of my life. Poetry keeps me grounded and between the extremes of the physical and spiritual worlds. I dream a lot and use many images in my poetry. Dreams are the dreamers poetry. However, I do not let them rule my life. I focus on the emotions I feel in them – that is where there truth rests. I have so many vivid and remembered dreams that I need to put them somewhere. Journals and poetry are where I put them only if I wake and remember them. I don’t force myself to remember dreams. It is a relief when I don’t to remember them.

I thought I would share the first three paragraphs of the introduction of By the Pond on pgs. ix-x:

Introduction

My poetry has been my therapy over the years. On March 20, 1993, I experienced an unusual and traumatic event. Over the years, poetry has helped me sort things out. I have always had a strong spiritual nature that is balanced by strong doubt. During periods of tremendous confusion, my poetry (sometimes more like stories, my son thinks) has helped me remember who I am, how I feel, and what I think, and always have since childhood. The poetic images I used mix and weave with my childhood and adult trauma—much of which is not clearly remembered. The theme I hope comes through is that we should not have our heads too far in the clouds or too deep in the dirt. Life exists as a balance somewhere in the middle, with little sojourns to both edges.

By the Pond is a reflection of my past and present, and it also represents my hope for the future. There was a pond in my childhood, a pond that I rode by a few times when I was young. It unsettled me, however, and I never wanted to go there. One time, as a child, I went by and the sun was very bright atop the deep blue of the water. There was wild growth all around the pond, but as pretty as it was, I could not look directly at it.

Water (especially in a pond) ripples readily, and pebbles and rocks are at the core of my poetry. The pond alludes to drowning and being weighed down by traumas, difficulties, confusing thoughts, and dreams. The image of the pond can be divided into two parts, a dark side and a light side that coexist paradoxically. My poetry represents a “dark night of the soul” that I went through in the 1990s.

Also, I remember a lot of my dreams. Mostly, I look at my emotions in them in addition to my state of mind. In other words, I don’t focus on what the dreams look like; rather, contemplate what they feel like to me. The mind creates its own kind of poetry that can reflect past memories, but I try to keep in mind that debris and overgrowth can hide a memory’s original clarity.

I have been through some difficult times. Yet – I am a glass half-full kind of person.