The Opal Flare

The poems collected in this chapbook were written over a period between my mother's death and the height of the Covid pandemic that claimed so many lives. My friends lost friends and close relatives. My students lost friends and close relatives. During the peak of the pandemic, my father passed away. He had to live out his days confined to an assisted living facility in Texas. I was unable to attend my mother' funeral (I was recovering from surgery), and Covid kept me from attending my father's funeral service. For a long time, I thought of myself as the "unfilial" daughter. These poems are not "about" my experiences, nor do they evade them. Instead, they take them on in the more mysterious realm of the unconscious. One might think of them as "soul-poems," or "sorrowing poems" with intimations of hope.