That Innocence Of Dreaming

About the Book

Poetry writing has proven proficient at helping me see what is there to be seen, hear what is there to be heard. I will see or hear or reflect on something which then provides an image, a nuance that emerges in a word, a line. The single line and image, written, provides a cadence, a focus of sound and echo that invites a second line, and more. Usually, the poems come quickly and run until they stop: the poem is complete. This book draws upon such poems over a pair of sweeps of my history plus a sampling of more recent poems that strike me as desirable in this collection. These pieces of my past often recollect for me the occasion that sparked the poems but also leave that occasion obscured and allow the poem to do its work of creating an image and a flow in my own mind. The poems, in my experience, write their meaning on my mind. And, I hope, on yours as well. For then the poems will have done their work.

About the Author

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in central Illinois. Since early in 1984, I have used the form I call Reflective Prayers as one way into my sense of the lectionary texts for a given Sunday or other worship occasion. I quickly found the form useful, indeed powerful for me, both in terms of searching the texts and searching me in resonance with the texts - spiritually, that is. The more mature of these have arrived through me over the past couple decades, the last 720 of which have been published with AuthorHouse.com. The practice with this form continues to be fertile for my spirit. I now live with my wife of fifty-six years, three dogs and a handful of cats in the quiet of an Illinois city.