First Love & Other Poems

Most of these poems deal with the everyday, the ordinary, but as Walt Whitman once declared, a blade of grass is also a miracle. It is my deepest wish, then, that these poems attract, entertain, teach, amuse, speak directly to the emotions, even cause wonder, but above all that they be accessible and comprehensible to their readers and listeners and perhaps make the ordinary a little less so. Poems should scare away no one, but rather, in profound service to the language of which they consist, greet one and all warmly and, in a sense, say, "Here we are for you." However, many important poets over the last century have seemingly spoken in tongues addressed principally to critics and assorted academics, thus rendering difficult, even impossible, for many of us access to a very significant form of communication and pleasure. I hope this book will work otherwise to welcome everyone to what each poem says and the way it says it. Indeed, our lives are kaleidoscopic, shards of moments that together form a mosaic. We can take a single minuscule shard from our life, or someone else's, or an entire mosaic, and breathe life into it so that it has substance and meaning, dimension and music. In brief, every poem herein has evolved from a reality, even that of a dream, visible and tangible or hidden and unseen, but imprinted on heart or mind. Each poem bears with it an image of my choice simply because I enjoy "seeing" a poem, my own included, and feeling it through several senses. My purpose is not to impose in any way the thrust of the image, my choice, on the reader, but simply to share a personal physical possibility and a way of feeling the poem. Perhaps not unlike a boy splashing barefoot through a warm puddle on a summer's day, I enjoy wallowing in a poem's images, its music, and all the things it is capable of. Besides, pictures are fun.