my friend isabel surprised me last week with a coincidental copy of "grass roots" (the 1974 edition), the annual creative publication of loyalist college in belleville, ontario, where i studied a long, long time ago. and lo, behold: my name, on pages 11 and 17.
i had forgotten that i used to write poetry. and i had certainly forgotten that any poetry of mine had ever been "published":

snow falls
dreaming
to the silent ground
and softening
like loving hands
the world.
i call out to you
without a word
as quietly
and bright
as eyes
as flags unfurled.
(december 1970)

******

the stars
stretching out
into the night blackness are not really

stars.
they are merely
warps in my
windowpane
and i lose

my belief in
above-and-beyondness
as the lights
lose their magic
and might.
(october 1974)

i was delighted. and, funnily enough, i remembered precisely why, at those very moments, i scrambled for pen and paper.