Poetry is "closest to the heart." Through its symbols, word pictures, intuition, feelings and emotions it is a hint of history, the momentary present and a visionary tool of the future. A poem or a painting is analogous to an iceberg-10% visible, 90% hidden meaning. "The reader provides the narrative." These poems, with the exception of five or six, were written after 2000. They show my explorations into the arts, love, people I met along the way, my protestations, introspections, and new perspectives I gained after times of change, personal problems and separations from those I love. The...

Poems come to me from many dimensions?personal, family, a friend, my community, or a world happening near or far from southern Indiana. Words grip me emotionally?as an empathy that I feel with someone else or out of my own soul. I may ponder the topic for a few minutes, or a few days, but I must write. It's like a ?tune I must play? but in poetic verse. I grab pen and paper or rush to the computer. My poetry falls in three areas. Some are ?protests? of societal problems throughout the world that I cannot be comfortable with: poverty, war, unruly political institutions, lack of resources for...