Dear Mary Angel

I can trace all my misfortune to one point... one moment in time. If I'd have done this, all would be different. If I'd have done that, I would be right where I am. But that one point, immutable as God Himself, isn't going anywhere; that is the choice I made, for better or worse, so any change I make for the better has to be made from a standpoint of correction. All those decisions, from that point onward, have been a course correction; a very long and arduous course correction.

It was the Summer of 1987. And it was a girl. I allowed myself to be snared by the obvious rather that the subtle; the brick rather that the glove. It could be the glove might not have fit as perfectly as I'd like to believe, but the brick has been a disaster, one that has had a decades-reaching grasp.

There's no going back; we both know this. But I believe this is the fulcrum upon which all my poetry depends. None of it would exist were it not for that moment in time. It has been an extraordinary gift

I know what I need to do. Not just need as in a course correction, but rather, what I feel led to do-- or feel led to desire. I finally know (or so I believe) what I want to be when I grown up... I wish to study the Bible. I wish to know it. I wish to soak it in. I want to point my intellect at Him, Jesus Christ. And I don't believe my love of poetry is in any way inconsistent with that desire; given the nature of my poetry.

I am going blind; not next month, or maybe next year, but it will come. How is that for poetic?

With Love,


E