These poems celebrate, each in its peculiarity, a birth of hope. ''True Works from Gate Five'' explores territories of mental illness, culminating in the salvific imprint of a finger touch. ''Words'' embarks on an errand of unlimited value; walking the grounds and swimming the waters of how it is when one cannot fully be what one is, that is, a being fully alive.
I write an ornate style of verse. I value polite words and courtesy. This propensity reflects in ''Words: Poems of Pain, Love and Redemption.'' Sometimes in this book of poems, as it were, dragons breathe fire that consumes victims. At other times, as in ''Plow of a Field in Novato'' a poem sings a wistful, ruminating song of the joy found at surrender to spiritual power embedded within the despair of a life sentence to hopeless addiction.
Themes of love and lust in some much of this poetry evoke readers to ride winds of charmed imagination. ''Thickets of Wire'' and ''Raisins for Breakfast'' exemplify these thematics. Pain and the hurt of dashed romantic desire in Ecuador birthed the poem ''Comforted.'' Exuberance with personality, distinction and a reminder to remember encapsulate the spirit of the poem ''Esther.''
The reader may read well assured that each of these sixteen poems not only wanted but needed expression..