finish what you start
your mother always said so
you know she was right

Winter Solstice Eve
fairy lights wink through the dark
a soft gasp of hope

When I was about 4 years old, I wrote a poem about a bumblebee that my mother thought was the best poem any child had ever written. She copied it out in her prettiest handwriting, using a pen with thick black ink, and adding many flourishes and curliques. She used her best white stationary, not my newsprint drawing paper I originally wrote it on. And then she illustrated it with her own fabulous drawings (I thought they were fabulous because her bumblebees really looked like bees, not dots, and her flower like flowers, not smudges.) She hung this creation inside a real frame, on the living room wall, not on the refrigerator. Everyone who came into our house was taken to see the poem and it was read aloud to them. Mom always followed the reading with, "And she's only four!" Many nights that year, when the house was dark and silent, I would get out of bed and tiptoe into the living room so I could gaze at my framed poem hanging in that place of honor. I have won other honors since then, for which I am grateful, but none of them have given me as much satisfaction as my bumblebee poem in my mother's handwriting.

seven days of rain
the air is like a pillow
cried on through the night