A year after the accident Ed and I joined the choir. Vicki moved the tenors over to the opposite side to accommodate Ed’s wheelchair, and Jerry helped Ed learn the music. He was frustrated because the respirator tube had created so much scar tissue in his throat and vocal cords that he could not sing clearly. But one Wednesday, as he was singing Alleluia he felt a great ripping pain. The scar tissue let loose, and he is now able to sing with spirit. Alleluia!

Read more by downloading the PDF below.

• Alleluia.pdf

It was 1978 and I was eight and a half months pregnant as I sat, uncomfortably, listening to a professor at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities tell my class that for every non-inclusive, sexist term in our papers, we would be marked down one whole grade. Half my class was female, unheard of in 1978, and I felt totally liberated – until my paper came back, marked with red ink, and lacking any grade at all. It didn’t take long to liberate my language as well.

But when I moved to Louisiana in 1980, the inclusive language of a Minnesota seminary became Yankee feminist language, aggressive and unwanted. As a student in the Graduate School of Social Work at Louisiana State University I was told that my diligence in language was neither appreciated nor appropriate to the culture. Unfortunately for my adjustment to a new town, I never did learn to hold my tongue, or to again construct blinders for my eyes. Instead I started examining other words and images for the perceptions that they created.

Read the entire essay by downloading the PDF below.

• Hear the Eco-Speak.pdf

This March (2004) is the third anniversary of Ed’s near fatal car accident. Each morning he thanks God for the new day, and each night he goes to sleep to the words of You are my sunshine. That’s the song I sang to him over and over in the hospital when I had run out of words. You’ll never know Dear, how much I love you, and then the prayer, Please don’t take my sunshine away. I knew I was not the only one praying that prayer. Thousands of people all over the world were praying for Ed, but the one he heard every day was the one sung by my voice, the one accompanied by my hand on his forehead.

Download full article below as a PDF.

• My Sunshine.pdf

THE STORY OF ADAM AND EVE’S TEMPTATION: A SHORT SKIT FOR DRAMATIC READING (For Six Characters)

Excerpt: “Adam and Eve lived in the beauty of the Garden of Eden where it was never too hot, and never too cold. They ate fruit freely from the abundant trees. Animals surrounded them as friends. There was no hatred, war or bullying in the garden. It was a paradise of peace…”

To download the skit, please click on the PDF below.

• Story of Adam and Eve.pdf

The pops of a shotgun awakened me. It was a crisp, November morning, squirrel season, too beautiful to stay inside – but too dangerous to walk in the woods. It was our land, but Louisiana country folk don’t cotton to northerners buying up land and posting “no hunting” signs. We’d already had our gas yard-light shot out, and my just-planted winter pansies rolled over by not-so-accidental truck tires.

So my husband and I decided to go to the local wildlife preserve for a walk through the sweet gum and cow oak turning red and gold against the evergreen of loblolly pine. We took the long trail, and when we finished, our stomachs echoed the squawking of overhead migrating geese. We headed to the closest restaurant, The Stumpwater Inn. Sounded inviting. We asked for stumpwater. They didn’t have it. But they had fried catfish and the choice of three veggies. I took black-eyed peas, creamed potatoes, and flat Italian green beans. The customers next to us had pulled two tables together and were having some kind of reunion. We listened. Blanchard’s 100th birthday – town hall dedication – flea market.

Read the rest of this essay by downloading the PDF below.

• Swords Into Plowshares.pdf

The poets I know hesitate to call themselves poets. They are waiters or business women or nurses, those labels that give out a steady paycheck. Poets don’t get paychecks, two copies of a journal maybe. I knew when I could call myself a teacher. I celebrated when I finally got board certified as a social worker, but it took years before I called myself “Poet.”

It happened at the publication of my first book. Others referred to me on radio or in print as a poet, but it still seemed a bit arrogant to refer to myself that way. Then I overheard my scientist husband conversing with another of his ilk about his wife, the poet, how for years he had not understood the workings of her irrational mind, been confused by the stream of unconsciousness she substituted for logic, and how he could now finally categorize her, like an illusive jigsaw puzzle piece, put there to tease, and finally when fit into its place, how it illuminates and makes whole the gestalt.

Read the rest of the article by downloading the PDF below.

• I Choose to Call Myself.pdf

I tried to write a television screenplay once. They told me my characters were too one sided. That meant that the good guys were too good and the bad guys too bad. It’s fun to watch tv movies now and guess how the good guys will screw up and the bad guys will pour out their heart. It has to happen, otherwise it won’t sell. That’s how it is in real life they say. But is it?

Let’s compare some television doctors. Remember Marcus Welby? And then there was Doug, the pediatrician on E.R. And you know the modern day television doctors who know more about the different positions of sexual activity than the correct positions of vertebrae. My husband is a doctor. I’m one of those rare wives who lived through medical school, internship, residency and drafted military service without ending in divorce, only because my husband, a pediatrician (like Dr. Doug,) was more like Dr.Welby. Still, on those few occasions when we found ourselves watching E.R., my husband often was heard shouting, “That’s it! Hold your line, Dougy! Don’t let those surgeons tell you what to do.”

Read the rest of this essay by downloading the PDF below.

• Life and Death and Doctor Shows.pdf

“We had sand in the eyes and the ears and the nose, And sand in the hair, and sand-between-the-toes.” — A.A. Milne

Sand. Doesn’t sound creative to me. It works its way into carpets, beds, corners. What’s so great about sand-between-the-toes? It itches. Causes blisters when you put on shoes. Christopher Robin doesn’t live in my house, and I don’t have a nanny or a maid to pick up after him. But if I think hard enough, I do remember when I was very young how I loved to dig my toes into warm sand and wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

Read the rest of this essay by downloading the PDF below.

• Sand Between the Toes.pdf

Moving has been identified as a major stressor and quantified in terms of life exchange units (LEU’s) in several widely used stress surveys (Coddington, 1972; Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Sarason, Johnson, & Siegel, 1978.) I am now preparing for the stress of my fourteenth move in twenty-five years of marriage, moves which have included living in eight states, buying and selling eleven houses, negotiating rental agreements, moving and packing tons of household goods, relocating children in their teen-age years, and finally, always having to create new community.

Through the early years of dislocation I was not employed outside of the home, and I could use all my energy and resources toward the moving process. However, in the last ten years I have been working as a social worker and therapist. It has meant less time and energy for the moves, as well as dealing with my own feelings regarding the loss of my practice and coworker camaraderie.

Read the rest of the article (reprinted from the Journal of Poetry Therapy) by downloading the PDF below.

• Identifying and Coping with the Emotional Tasks of Moving.pdf

Teachers of gifted/talented (G/T) students have known for a long time that poetry is a very special medium with their students. Many G/T students write poetry on their own, and those who are assigned to write it are often astounded with their results. Those of us who are familiar with poetry therapy know how poetry can bring out inner knowledge that was previously hidden from our psyche. This article addresses the concept of “difference.” G/T students are, after all, “special education” students. They know they are different from most of their peers. “Diversity” is a concept which is being addressed in almost all areas of life, but it is here integrated with the idea that G/T students have to deal with their own differences as well as those of others.

The rest of this article (reprinted from the Journal of Poetry Therapy) can be downloaded as a PDF below.

• Journal of Poetry Therapy Article.pdf