Thanks to my first supporters in my Kickstarter campaign to promote The Clay Pot! Here’s a poem that was published in The Penwood Review, a Southern California poetry journal that was a frequent outlet for my mentor, Dr. Pilkey. This was written as I contemplated my return from Japan in 2006, and first appeared in print in 2007:
“To Have Boldly Gone”
Where I have been through three unthinking years
Is not so far from where you knew me, when
You’d looked through all I’d never seen and been
Surprised by what might grow from showered tears;
And yet, we’ve read our way up through the spheres;
Heard creaking, clanking music; filled a den
With smoke and dreams and laughter; but again
Stilled all these things except what rhyme reveres—
So you who know me well, consider yet
That all I have not thought of still has been
Caught up in all I’ve seen, and each I’ve met
Has been to tell me now what I knew then:
That where we stumble boldly, still there’s grace
Trips over all we’ve done and saves our place.PGE 5-27-2006
This poem was later published in my first collection, Depth Perception.