Tag: Christian poetry

Authentic Faith, Choosing What to Publish, Jesus, The Love of God, Writing the Truth in Love

God’s Love Present in Our World

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Reposting this timeless piece first published 9 years ago:

“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.” (I John 4:7)

As a publisher, I seek books that demonstrate the love of God … stories ever fresh, personal and creative … stories of a love that has power to change lives and change history. Many Cladach books tell of lives changed by this love.

  • In Come, Stay, Celebrate! we read of John and Judith Galblum Pex loving people in Israel—all kinds of people—into the kingdom of God and his Son.

  • In On Kitten Creek, we read how God came into the midst of a people devoted to him in a place consecrated to him, and he worked in unexpected ways to make his love tangible.

  • In Journeys to Mother Love we read how love and forgiveness can overcome and heal the wounds and conflicts in mother-child relationships.

  • In All We Like Sheep, we read how God used flocks of sheep to teach two shepherdesses about his shepherd-heart of love.

  • In Remembering Softly, we read poetic expressions of moments when God’s love seeped, rushed, jolted, flashed, and poured into a searching heart.

  • In Creation of Calm, we read how God’s love transformed pain and loss into beautiful art that brings calm to others caught in life’s storms.

  • In Hostage In Taipei, we read a true, extreme account of God’s love working through believers literally caught in the crossfire, eventually overcoming violence and hate.

  • In Face to Face, we read of Love personified who, unlike everyone else, looked at a woman broken and spiritually oppressed, saw her heart, and released her with his words of love.

Photo credit: Canstock Photo/ © paktaotik
Book Publishing, Christian Art, Creating Community, Experiencing Community, Joy of Reading, Poetry

Poetry is for Sharing

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This is me and a grandchild who also enjoys and writes some poetry … and who contributed art to three of my poetry books.

Poetry is for sharing. It brings people together in community to sing, listen, illustrate, recite together. Poetry that comes from the heart also touches hearts. Poetry reminds us of our common humanity. Scripture Psalms are poetry. Song lyrics and hymns are poetry. Nursery rhymes gave us some of our first experiences of rhyme and meter. As our society becomes more mechanized and tech-centered, a hunger and appreciation for poetry is growing. Really, I can’t imagine the human experience without poetry.

I started writing poems in fifth grade. Proud of my first real poem (It was about Jesus as my friend) I showed it to my Sunday School teacher. She said, “You should send this to the Junior Joys!” My parents, though, cautioned me, “Don’t get your hopes up. They receive lots of submissions.”

Well, I took courage and sent my poem to the publication’s masthead address. Then waited. About six months later, it appeared in print! To think that Sunday School kids and their parents across the country were reading verses of my words and feelings. Those verses  expressed something others could relate to—and maybe be encouraged by. Perhaps my little poem helped them put words to their own experience, or the experience they wanted to have.

As I grew up, composing poems in my journals to express childhood wonder—or teenage angst—was mostly private outlet. But the verses stepped out of my personal reveries and the locked pages of my diary when I contributed a piece to my high school poetry journal. Then a teacher asked me to read another of my poems to the class. And later, my college creative writing teacher read a poem of mine to her class.

In those situations I realized how the rhythm and rhyme, the sound and sense of a poem can connect writer, reader, and hearers in a shared experience, shape a shared vision.

As a young adult, when a friend moved away, I was asked to write a poem and read it at her going-away party. Later, for my sister’s birthday party, I composed and read a poem.

When I had a family of my own, our Thanksgiving tradition became one where each family member brought something creative to the dinner table to share: a Thanksgiving or Fall themed poem, a scripture or psalm, a picture colored for the occasion.

Through the years I got busy with church work, music ministry, freelance writing, and family. But poetry was a gift that stayed in the background and came to the fore to help me express my emotions during times of loss and grief, as well as times of wonder and joy. I sometimes shared them with friends. Then I began submitting poems to publications. Here’s an example of one that was published:

There came a time when it dawned on me I had a pile of poems produced in all stages of my life (up to then). I had published a novel and more than one nonfiction book of my own—and numerous book for other authors. Why not publish a collection of my poetry? I arranged the poems in reverse chronological order, from the most recent all the way back to that 5th grade poem from Junior Joys. So many memories!—some easier than others to recall. I titled it Remembering Softly: A Life In Poems. It included colorful art by two creative young granddaughters.

Book Cover: Remembering Softly: A Life In Poems

The book garnered positive reviews. And it fostered togetherness. For instance:

  • One niece told me she was reading the poems to her boyfriend.
  • My father, who was about 90 at the time and experiencing dementia, kept the book on his chair-side table to pick up and read now and then. He was convinced that the picture on the cover was me! I couldn’t change his mind on that, but I decided that was okay if it helped him feel closer to me (since I lived hundreds of miles away).

When you’re a poet and/or a lover of poetry, you talk with friends about poetry. Here’s a pic from a video of me chatting with a friend about her poetry:

When I’ve had opportunity, I have taught others about poetry, to help them appreciate its depths and treasures, and to help those who want to communicate through poetry to learn poetic techniques. This happened mostly at writers conferences.

Poetry readings also bring people together around the sharing of poetry. At this local literary event, I read from Remembering Softly to an audience of all ages. It was a new experience for me to not personally know a single person in the audience:

You just never know where and to whom your poetry will go. Here is a friend and loyal fan, Jim. He lives in Texas where his local B&N store held open mike nights. He took my second published book of poetry, Glimpsing Glory, and read from it to the assembled bookstore cafe crowd!

Glimpsing Glory came out at the same time as the Covid pandemic. One reader, a businessman, frustrated with lockdown and online meetings, shared this poem with a Zoom group:

Screen time in spring is deadening,
though perhaps necessary.
But more needed is the feel
of mountain breezes in your lungs,
a rocky trail under your feet,
the velvet of unfurling leaves
sweet scents of new-mown grass
and just-turned earth,
the taste of first strawberries.

Book signing events happen, too, now and then. My husband, Larry, and I participated in this event in Denver where I signed and sold books, including the illustrated Christmas story-in-verse, Something Is Coming To Our World.

You might even find your dog enjoys your poetry. (We know cowboys sing to their cows.) Here my dog, Jasper, seems to be engrossed in the anthology, The Animals In Our Lives, to which I contributed a poem about taking Jasper for neighborhood walks: “Canine Social Media.”

This humorous poem is the one that won me an award from The Dog Writers Association of America:

Meanwhile, poems keep coming to my heart and mind. And as I share them, they bring people together. I invite you to join the reading community of my latest poetry collection:

I wish you happy and meaningful poetry reading and sharing!

Joy and peace,

 

If you appreciate my posts and poetry, I hope you’ll read my books! If you want to send some quick encouragement for me to keep on keeping on, then here’s something else you can do:

Much appreciated!

 

 

 

Answering the Call of Christ, Authentic Faith, Creative Nonfiction, Experiencing Community, Following Jesus, God and Creation, God working in history, Offering HOPE

Together With God

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In this poetic essay I engage with the idea that we need to get involved—with others—in what God is doing in our world. Will we listen to what the past and present are saying, so we can move together WITH our loving God now … stepping into the possibilities that call us to a renewed future?

WITH

When the angel said to Mary, “For nothing is impossible with God”

and when Jesus said, speaking of the rich young man, “With God all things are possible”

did they mean that God would single-handedly make seemingly-impossible things happen?

Well, surely “with” means with. Possibilities are not actualities. But they can become so.

First, choices will be made . . . by God, by us. . . .

Choices matter in each

  • attraction or encounter.
  • touch or grasp.
  • reaction or response.
  • intersection or dead-end.
  • word spoken or thought silenced.

And, as in the case of Mary, life-giving choices and actions don’t happen alone but

WITH.

Whence comes this ability and necessity to choose, this invitation to respond and cooperate?

—From One who speaks potentiality, beauty, and creativity out of Love . . . connecting us as persons, relating us to all of nature, to every part of ourselves, and to God (through Christ who gives us life and the Spirit who is with us). We are image-bearers. We are all in some sense

WITH.

Living here in time and space, each of our moments is thick with the past—and pregnant with the future—calling us to be creators, curators, visionaries, encouragers, healers, leaders, servants.

Will we

receive the breath

heed the voice

cleave to the nearness

of God?

Will we give birth to actions of faith, hope, and love

WITH?

Look up—attend, listen to this present moment.

Look back—see the river of the past feeding into the now.

Look down—see that we are standing in an estuary of the potent, teeming present.

Look toward the horizon—see the future rolling and swelling. Which waves will break upon the shore?

Look around—all that surrounds us, that the river currents and ocean tides wash in, how it is mixing. At this time, in this place, what can we do to bring

  • clarity not murkiness?
  • free flow not stagnation?
  • sweetness not putridity?
  • abundance not scarcity?
  • hope that helps people know they are

WITH?

We are part of the becomingness of everlasting life!

Will we face the moment, listen to what it is saying about us, about the past that has influenced who we are, about what we are bringing into the future, and what the future may be bringing to us?

God—being revealed through Jesus, the Scriptures, and creation—is patient, persistent, longsuffering, even slow . . . convincing, helping, here

WITH.

Like compass needles, we seek, seek True North; and True North wants to, wills to, be found.

Yet, bent, we wobble and resist.

But God is not a faraway star. God is

  • the true atmosphere giving us breath.
  • the true magnetism holding us together.
  • the true dawn waking us again and again.

Does the needle think it is the true one and North should get in line?

God “strengthens the humble but opposes the proud.”—

This is to say, when we set ourselves in opposition, we cannot join hands

WITH.

No matter where we go, where we have been, where our feet stand now in time . . . we are not alone, never away from God’s influence, care, wooing. If “God with us” holds all our times past—keeps our “tears in a bottle”. . . . If God at every moment sees all the possible steps into the future. . . . If God imagines the myriad possible intersections of our path with the paths of others. . . . Then let us act, step out, take hold, clasp hands, join hearts

WITH.

Forces exist that would divide us, separate us, within, without.

God—Love—would bring us together.

In this estuary of the consequential, substantial present . . .

The young gambol in swirls of fresh water, thinking they’ll forever play among the land mammals, trees, and sun-drenched grasses.

We who have traveled longer sense saltiness in the water and feel the undertow pulling away from familiar moorings. We will soon find ourselves in the waters of what from here appears to be dark swelling mysteries and unfathomed depths … to a separation temporal, but a connection and communion everlasting.

Fresh water and salt water mingle here and now, but these waters continually recede, like breath and blood flowing in and out of lungs—rhythms of life attuned

WITH.

If we have a God who speaks, comforts, helps,

and in whom “all things hold together,”

then surely God is continually present to us and all creation?

And if God’s Spirit is manifest “wherever two or three are gathered,”

then surely God the Spirit is speaking and influencing here, there,

WITH.

In this moment, are we thriving?

How can we continue to stand, let alone flourish, if divided against ourselves—lacking harmony in our inner lives, our families, our churches, our nations, our world?

We say we believe some form of:

  • “God created the heavens and the earth.”
  • “God called creation ‘good’.”
  • “God so loved the world. . .”

Then God isn’t against us but

WITH!

Can we agree, in this in-between time of grace and faith, as we open our hearts and minds to the Alpha and Omega, to seek God’s reign and will “on earth as it is in heaven,” and work together

WITH?

This moment carries roots and leaves of past moments and seeds of all future moments. What we do—now—matters. Is this present mix of waters rich with life and health both ecological and societal? Jesus said we are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” We are caretakers of creation and each other when we partner

WITH.

Why do we blindly and stubbornly waste personal and corporate energies on greedy squabbles and turf wars?

Can we

  • accept slowness; unplug, listen, “fear not”?
  • trust together in creation’s innate ability to heal and renew, and accept our part in that?
  • acknowledge our own need for healing and renewal?
  • choose a mindset of benevolence for all?
  • have faith and hope in goodness and salvation?

Surely our God of creative, gracious, relentless love, will help us to join

WITH.

We need each other.

Will we lead the way by giving up worn-out stances, protectiveness, fear?

Let us be conservative—conservers of the truly good.

Let us be liberal—truly generous and tolerant.

We can each take responsibility to do something to make a positive difference, to be life-giving, to partner with God and each other in what Love seeks to do and calls us to participate in, as co-laborers. This labor is not burdensome, when we are yoked

WITH.

I know some people who choose to listen to, love freely, and work with God to sweeten the waters where they stand:

  • A prosperous, conservative Christian couple who cultivate acres of gardens to grow produce for their local food bank.
  • An evangelical pastor who has organized a ministry of prayer, friendship, and outreach to Muslim refugees in his city.
  • A retired professor and writer who follows God in vulnerability, revealing her trauma and healing to help others.
  • Contemplatives and poets who listen to and articulate a language of the heart to reach and touch fellow longing hearts.
  • Theologians reaching across institutional divides with hopeful understandings of God’s essence and presence.
  • A quiet man who invites neighbors into his home, where he and his wife pray and care for them, and share life together.
  • Wounded healers who listen, love, and pray with all who come; inviting, seeking, finding Jesus in broken places.
  • My friend who sits with people dying alone in hospital, so they will not die alone but know they are

WITH.

We stand here in a richness of the influential past and the potential future

as hope enlivens the waters. Will we:

  • vision together a more healthy and happy future?
  • seek healing for wounds we carry from the past?
  • affirm the good in this pregnant moment?
  • join hands together and partner

WITH God?

~Catherine Lawton

“With” (here slightly revised) was first published in the book Partnering with God. (SacraSage, 2021)

Unsplash Photos: 1) Joshua Gaunt 2) Nick Fewings

 

Contemplative, Experiencing peace, Offering HOPE, Poetry, Seasons

The Long Cold Stare of January

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JANUARY

A captive to granite gray stare,

I shiver and hunker there.

Clouds shudder also and

shake loose frozen crystals

flashing slivered light.

Now silver gleam the gazing eyes.

I rise unblinking, captivated.

As I awoke from sleep one morning, these words came distinctly to my mind: The long, cold stare of January.

I don’t know where those words came from. But they came clear and definite and stayed with me. I wrote that phrase in my journal, thought about it a while, looked outside at the wintry landscape, then composed the (above) poem.

I live in northern Colorado. January is our coldest month. And it is a long month, 31 days. The cold, short days and long nights can make one feel captive. It is a season when people, those who can afford it, like to travel to places like Mexico, Florida, or Spain. Other people may dream of warm beaches during January. But the weather often keeps us indoors and isolated. One can feel captive.

One can also feel captive in an uncomfortable way when people stare at them. Cold stares are especially disconcerting.

Feeling trapped, fearful, impatient with your situation can make your outlook seem hard and gray. But, truly, there is beauty in every season. Opening our hearts to “see” that beauty can turn those cold, gray eyes to a silver gaze.

Contemplatives speak of the “gaze” of the face of Christ that holds, sees deeply, and can draw out the inner radiance of one’s true self.

Recently I was reading a story that described the “silver” eyes of some Scottish Highland folk. I had never heard eye color described as silver before. Polished silver is not necessarily a cold-looking metal. A warmth seems to gleam from deep inside.

Hidden in every hard place is hope. If we look for it with eyes to see, it will eventually gleam forth; and then, rather than be captives we may become captivated by the presence of love and even joy.

~Catherine Lawton

Photo by Kacper Szczechla on Unsplash

This post was first published at Godspacelight 1/18/22 and then published here slightly edited. I am reposting it in January 2024, because this January we had a frigid Arctic Blast that definitely made us “captives” for a few days.

Art in Books, Book Publishing, Christian Art, Devotional, Joy of Reading, New Releases, Poetry

Creative Author and Creative Readers Reflect on our Creator God

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Sample pages from BIBLE POEMS (with reader doodles)

The creativity of Donna Marie Merritt, poet and author of Bible Poems for Reflection and Response extends even beyond her poetic word pictures. She had the idea of giving her readers the opportunity to not only reflect on her poems (which themselves are reflections on the Bible) but to allow space on the pages, including 17 blank pages, for readers to respond with their own poems, thoughts, prayers, drawings and doodles. The book released this month (September 1, 2020). What we’ve already heard from readers tells us this book is encouraging reflection:

  • “These jewels, these pearls each carry a small glimmer of truth, wisdom, stern instruction, and unconditional love.”
  • “I am delighted to take away thoughtful pieces … to meditate on further.”
  • “The questions raised throughout the book help me evaluate, repent, and respond with worship.”

One reader sent us photos of the reflective/responsive art she created on the book pages. You can view those colorful doodles in this short video:

As a publisher I love to bring authors and readers together, and especially I love it when they are reflecting together on God’s truth, creation, and the life of faith. In this way, writing—and reading—a book of poetry can lead to worship expressed in words, art and action.

Inspiration for writers, Poetry, The writing life, Uncategorized

Moments Morph into Poems

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Our lives are built of moments in time and space. And just as one moment of your life doesn’t define you, so one poem doesn’t define a poet.

Some moments of my life I wouldn’t want anyone to remember. Some moments beg interpretation. But not every moment of life warrants being grappled with or immortalized in a poem.

Some of my poems come out of my humanness / humanity; some come from the living workings out of faith; some come out of my searching, listening, and questioning; some poems come out of the sensations of a moment.

Some moments that inspire poems are microcosms of creation’s cosmic array, snapshots of life’s bigger pictures. Some poetic moments are unique flashes or epiphanies that I wish could be repeated but will likely never come again, at least not quite the same. These moments have transformative power if we open our hearts to receive what they have to give. I think that is true, to some extent, of poetry as well.

I don’t sit down to make lines and rhymes, but to use words, rhythms, and metaphors to paint pictures of life’s moments of observing, noticing, being present to someone or something in a new way … of seeing a sometimes-startling new depth or aspect or facet of a fleeting, evocative, life-giving moment.

John Wesley is quoted as saying, “Learn the importance of every moment, which just appears, and is gone for ever!”

Poems come to the poet out of living moments that, penciled on paper, morph into verses of word art that can bring meaning to the reader’s own moments.

~Catherine Lawton

Experiencing peace, In the world but not of it, Poetry, Writing the Truth in Love

Antidote to Hate, Fear, Disgust, and Vexation

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With this poem I affirm my faith in:

  • God’s love, that changes hearts.

  • God’s power, that calms storms.

  • Jesus’ victory, that delivers from evil.

  • The Holy Spirit’s presence, that offers soul rest.

ANTIDOTE

Some things in this world make me mad—
but I cannot live with hate.
The One whose anger had no sin
plants His love within.

Some things in this world frighten me—
but I cannot live in fear.
The One who calmed the thundering storm
keeps me safe and warm.

Some things in this world are abhorrent to me—
but I cannot live in disgust.
The One who cast the demons out
gives a victory shout.

Some things in this world vex my nerves—
but I cannot live in tension.
The One who took all mankind’s stress
gives vitalizing rest.

~Catherine Lawton

(extracted from the book, Remembering Softly: A Life In Poems  by Catherine Lawton © 2016)

 

Devotional, Poetry

Enhance Your Devotions With Poetry

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Poetry for Praise, Worship, Devotion, Opening our Hearts to God

In our experience of God’s presence, poetry can help us focus and engage our senses and entire being. Poetry can help us process life and emotions—and see ourselves—in new ways, and thus be open to hearing God say fresh, new things to us. Scripture does this also, of course. And much of the Bible was written as poetry. I have long found soul nourishment and renewed perspective in the Psalms. And how can a person read Song of Solomon and not believe God woos and reaches us through the five senses he has given us? Isaiah, the prophet, wrote often in poetry. Sometimes poetic expression reaches straight to the heart more effectively than prose.

I believe God still speaks through poets today. Sometimes with a prophetic voice. Sometimes imparting wisdom. Sometimes bringing clarity. Sometimes lifting the soul to hope and love.

Even if you think you aren’t “into” poetry, you probably are more than you realize. Song lyrics are a type of poetry. Along with the music, songs can pierce or soothe our hearts as well as our minds.

I encourage you to include poetry in your devotional reading, meditative prayer, quiet times, and soul care. Here are some poetry collections in which readers are finding poems that help them focus on God’s presence and love:

Glory-fr-cover

“Luminous, Christian spiritual walk poetry that blends the daily journey with God and the beauty and glory of God’s created world.So many of the poems provided moments of prayer for me.” ~Jimmie Kepler, reader and reviewer

“I read a couple of your poems each morning.” ~Alice Scott-Ferguson, poet, author, reader

. . .

9781945099175

“In our own seasons of suffering, words to explain the pain, to cry out to God, or to get a grip on our faith…”

–Elaine Wright Colvin, WIN

“A journey of worship and creativity around pain.”
–Katherine Sanford, reviewer on Amazon
. . .
“Read the poems along with your current Bible study or dip in and savor one or a few each day when you pray or think or need the boost of God’s love and purpose and truth.”
–Janet Clare F., online reviewer
. . .
“This book is a steady and wise companion for those who read the Bible with real devotion and honest questions.” –Connie Wanek, poet
. . .

“[These] poems individually and collectively pour out love for who God is.”

–Glynn Young, blogger/reviewer

“I am reading them along with my daily Scripture and other devotional readings.”

–Bev Coons, reader

. . .

“To read this book is to … open one’s own heart in unexpected ways.”

–Susan Elaine Jenkins, reader/reviewer

. . .

Nature Writings, Nurturing Wonder, Poetry

Where Do the Poems Come From?

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“Which do you like best? The mountains or the ocean?” My sister and I would ask each other.

I could never decide. In California for much of my life, I didn’t have to choose. We had both within close distance. I could look up and see the steadfastness of the Sierras or the Coastal Range with their redwoods, pines, deer, bears, raccoons, waterfalls and trout streams that fed the valleys. I could often feel the ocean breezes and smell the salt air from tides so full of power yet knowing their limits, from waves that lapped like earth’s heartbeat.

The metaphors we claim as our own come to us from our surroundings like a fawn stepping out of the forest or beach glass glistening in the sand.

“Which season do you like best?” was another question my sister and I would discuss. Winter offered Christmas. Summer offered school-less, barefoot days, swimming and camping. Spring meant orchards in bloom, Easter, newness.

When I returned with my husband in midlife to my native state of Colorado, I found that daily life was even more determined by the seasons here, especially winter and summer. I found that Spring near the Rockies is a matter of winter and summer fighting it out until summer wins a precarious victory.

But fall remains my favorite season, a time of the year that most inspires me to write poems. As I prepare Remembering Softly: A Life In Poems, I find myself in the Autumn of my life. Christmas doesn’t bring quite the same delight and anticipation except as our grown children and our six grandchildren share the celebrations with my husband and me. Summer I love in this high country, where wildflowers bloom from spring to early fall, the scent of summer rains on prairie grasses imparts indescribable sweetness, and sunsets paint glorious colors across the wide sky.

But fall … During this season of life colors have muted a little, most storms have settled, and anticipation of change keeps one mindful that each era of life comes—and then passes. We must gather the harvest, the fruit, the beauty—as I do from my garden—and preserve it, distill it, package it to sustain us in the winter and to share with others.

When we lived near the Pacific Coast of Northern California, we enjoyed hunting for agates on the beach any time of year. Sometimes as a wave receded, we’d see the semi-precious stones tumbling in the gravelly sand. This process had polished them to translucence, often revealing mossy patterns inside, each unique and formed by the accumulated years. Other types of agates are found in the mountains and on the plains. Each of these gems uniquely encapsulates the effects of pressures and changes in the formation of our earth home. Yet, looking deep within each agate elicits a certainty that these natural processes were guided by a beautiful, loving, almighty Creator.

I think poems are like agates.

This week I had a conversation with my sister, who has also written verse. “Where does a poem come from?” we wondered aloud. Sometimes it seems to rise up from some secret place deep within. Other times a poem—or the inspiration for one—seems to come from without. Our grandfather used to say with a twinkle in his eye that he wrote poems when the “muse sat on his shoulder.” To me it seems as if help comes surely, perhaps from a literary angel. In his poem, “The Country of Déjà Vu,” Wendell Berry asserts that his poems “came through the air, I wrote them down, and sent them on” like migrating birds stopping at his feeder. Perhaps that is as good an explanation as any.

I still marvel at an experience I had in my young adult years. At home with two toddlers, my husband busy with his career, I was emotionally bound up by griefs and losses, especially the death of my mother. I hadn’t written a poem for a long time. One evening I went by myself to a poetry reading at a religious retreat center near our home. I knew no one there. The woman poet read with warmth from verses full of life and light and love. I didn’t go expecting this to happen; but, somehow, soaking in the spoken rhyme, rhythm, and sense, awakened the gift in me. For months after that evening, poems began freely coming to mind. The opening of this fountain provided one part of the healing the Lord began working in and through me, which continues today.

The important thing is to capture on paper the phrases, images, and insights as they come; to sit with them, savor them, polish them like agates; and if they pass the test of holding together and ringing true, to share them.

I won’t limit each poem’s meaning by trying to explain the emotions and experiences that, for me, are encapsulated in each one. As I send them out, they are free to take on new meanings as each reader looks into them. Perhaps for you a poem will speak to a quandary, a sorrow, or a joy you are experiencing at this season of your life. That is the beauty of sharing a gift of poetry.

Photo: Overlooking a Lost Coast beach, Humboldt County, CA. © C.Lawton

Note:

This essay was first published as “A Word About These Poems” in the book, Remembering Softly: A Life in Poems.

 

My second collection of poems is Glimpsing Glory: Poems of Living & Dying, Praying & Playing, Belonging & Longing