Poetry
Sailing, April
My husband and I had a Cape Dory 31 sailboat and cruised the Chesapeake Bay from the James River to the Patuxent for many wonderful years. This poem recalls the first sail of the season--leaving Deep Creek harbor, motoring down the James River and raising the sails in Hampton Roads.
Published in September 2013, Harboring Secrets is a select compilation of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of the Chesapeake Bay Writers group.
I also have a short story in this anthology. You can purchase it from all major booksellers and e-book sellers here.
On Friendship
Winner of the first prize in the 2011 York County Library Literary Contest, this poem celebrates my best friend, Karen Holman, who died in 2004 at the age of 57. We had been friends for 42 years, yet none of the many stories, poems, books and essays I read about friendship quite captured the spirit of our connection. As I read Ann Patchett's "Truth and Beauty," I thought, "we weren't like that." And when I read Gail Caldwell's memoir, "Let's Take the Long Way Home," I cried, even as I thought, "we weren't like that."
Time
My first published poem, “Time,” appeared in a national high school poetry anthology. During an especially tedious sophomore biology class I doodled in the margins of my schoolbook:
I stare at the clock’s
Unyielding face
And wonder why
The human race.
Too Far
I first wrote this poem when I was 17 and a senior in high school, dating a college boy. He took me to his room on a hot spring afternoon and, well, let's just say I extracted myself before he went "too far." My first clue should have been the Playboy centerfold on the wall. I reworked the poem and submitted it to the 2009 Virginia Writers Club Golden Nib Contest, where it won third place.
