This first book represents my youthful romance with verse.  Written when I was in my thirties, it is 167 pages long and contains forty-three poems.  Most of the poems are rhymed, some are short, some are long, and some are sonnets.  It is out of print but occasionally surfaces on Amazon.  The following sonnet is a representative sample.

Everything’s On Loan

I borrowed all my atoms from the earth
And nature mixed and matched my human form
Amidst the constant death and vibrant birth
The heavens loaned me soul and made me warm.

My knowledge comes from years of human strife
My energy, from mother earth and sun
My intellect, my nature, and my life
Are shaped and changed and touched by everyone.

My dwellings come from woods and stones and mines
All borrowed like myself and not my own
Nor do my children, nor these very lines
Belong to me, no, everything’s on loan.

But then I loved you and began to see
My thoughts, my feelings, do belong to me.