Perfectly Still

I could not throw away the material in this book although it was
my intention. I was purging file cabinets, crying as I pitched
decades of class materials, student papers, course curricula, and
various bits and bobs one collects after a half-century of teaching.
But it had to go. All of it. I wanted to clear space for new
ways of inhabiting this time of life.

As I tossed file folders into a trash bin, I let go of various
professional identities I had formed over my teaching career,
but a slim folder of poems just kept hovering like a shy kitten
on the periphery of the stacks of paper headed for the trash. In
that folder, I found a version of myself I had rarely shared, and
I realized I wasn’t quite ready to part with it. I found a tenderness
and a vulnerability that I hoped might serve as guides to
my next decade. I discovered notions soft and quiet, feelings of
ease and acceptance.

I like to think that in my best days as a teacher, I emboldened
my students to show their work—in class, in group workshops,
in small publications, in private collections, on stages,
and in life. In Perfectly Still, I take on my often-repeated advice.
And I also take courage from the many precious students I had
the pleasure of working with who let themselves be seen. My
deepest gratitude goes out to each of them.

LifeStory Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9832382-3-2 Copyright ©2023, paperback, 66 pages