CAROLYN CONGER, PhD

I needed to wait in the hall I needed to wait in the hall a long time and not be welcomed To see your books on common shelves to be shared Books inscribed to you Some books I gave you last Christmas And to hear worried phrases and roaring grunts from voices not quite yours I needed to wait long enough to be sure that if that door were to open there might not still be an easy chair (or two) A joyful if unsteady greeting And a dresser with drawers that smelled the sa

Death is not in my sights now Nor ’round the corner But nearer than it once was Here late in life’s long end game What plays are left us? Joy friends love joy friends love FIN Even our blackest blunders Dark fears and regret Can’t scare away love from now. © Richard Chamberlain 2009

I saw who I was before I was! There is a perception of eons of genetic material slowly adding each piece of nucleic acid DNA from countless ancestors and countless mutations. I can see the huge golden egg from mother filled with genetic material from both her mother and father. Then I see the tiny sperm, so overwhelmed by the size of the egg and so determined to seed life, also filled with nuclear material from both mother and father. I have no idea who all these donors were,

When your heart aches And, some inner voice Recites that old list of faults Or when the colors of the world Seem to pale and your Trying to be positive and upbeat Seems like a lie you tell to yourself Remember that I too have felt this And, so have your mother, father, friends, and children And even the master teachers of the world If you pause now Just for 10 seconds B r e a t h e And feel your Heart’s Beat Know that your Heart-blood courses through you Without y