This poem is a cross-section of my life, my soul, my history... perhaps also of yours. Read it, and perhaps see your own past - or your future.

Sometimes you just put down what happens, and it turns out it's a choking feeling in your throat, or a bit of someone's life, or both; you write it down and call it a poem.

Read it out. Read it outside. Read it out loud. Read it out to a friend. This is the wonderful world we have been given to live in.

This one dates me. It was back when they were still testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere - - but even back then, Spring was so beautiful . . .

The lecturer on Japanese stone gardens said the greatest skill of the gardener was to make every thing look perfectly natural, and my mind immediately gave me this haiku.

Bleak December. We'd been sending each other a new poem every work day. I finished work a few minutes early, and no poem had arrived. I simply wrote her what was in my heart.

I can't say anything without making the description longer than the poem. Fortunately, no further comment is necessary.

Why should this find a place in the "Love Poem" category? Perhaps you think the speaker takes up so much energy denying love that you begin to wonder. Good, you're supposed to.

Not only admirable people fall in love. You may feel the man you are about to meet (not me, thank heaven!) well deserves his fate. (And yes, any resemblance to the work of A. E. Housman is intended.)