Childhood exposure to the rhyme and meter of poets like Poe and Longfellow gave me a lifelong love for poetry. I'm a bivocational pastor, ministering to seniors, and also an RN, helping mothers birth and breastfeed babies. These callings are special to me, but the one I've felt most deeply throughout my life has been this creative call to write poetry. This is a republication of my first book of poems, written from my early teens until 1991. For me, poetic composition has been like preaching prophetic burdens. And as with sermons, I learn more in putting them together than I can ever convey...