Greetings from the accessible poet

Welcome! I hope you find my website a place where we can explore life and poetry together.

I write poetry because I love its versatility. I love how it uses sight and sound together to convey multiple meanings. Poetry imbues words with the power to speak to our souls.

Poetry sometimes gets a bad reputation. Perhaps that's from all those teachers who didn't make it come alive. But as Billy Collins so aptly put, poetry is the history of the human heart. How amazing is that!


This year marks my fiftieth anniversary of using a wheelchair. I was in a car accident when I was young, and my life turned upside down. But with the help of my family, friends, and the philosophy of one day at a time, I became a lawyer, a poet, scuba diver, world traveler, wife, and happy. As we get to know each other, you'll find out how I got my life back on track. Not that I'm not thrown off every once in a while. We all are. But basically, I've an amazing life.

My brother, David, and I were talking today about how people love to put others in categories. She's disabled, he's gay, they're transgender, he's black, etc. Groups are great when we need to advocate for ourselves. They give us power. On the flip side, we all want to be known for just us, the person we are and not the label we've been given. If we never see past those labels, we miss out on so much. And if we box ourselves and our expectations up inside those labels, we miss out on our potential.

So, here, let's rip off those labels, take a close look at them, and then tear up what holds us back.

To acknowledge people and things that help us through life, I've created a page where we can post gratitude haikus. For those of you who don't know, a haiku is a three-line poem where the first and third lines are 5 syllables, and the middle line is seven. The first two lines usually state something and the last line is a turn. I've posted two on the wall for examples.

In closing, I'd like to thank my good friend, Alison McBain who is a writer and poet among many of her other hats. She helped me get started with this site. In fact, she's been a great mentor in helping me get poems published and finish my first full length poetry book, Recalibrating Gravity. I'm one of five finalists in When Words Count Pitch Week because of her encouragement. We all need an Alison in our lives. So dear Alison, thank you!

That's it for now. Drop me a line or a haiku. And off we go...

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