Dear Shirley:

When I wrote the short post above last night I completely missed your post referring to the blackberries and am glad I read it this morning. Wish there.. well, there are ways- and you are practicing one through the burning-stick imagery and ongoing meditations, to get rid of that inner bully. Kind of making a bully-phobic chemical interaction with the inner bully- rejecting it. Being Shirly- phillic and Inner-Critic-Phobic- I like that (I am referring to your chemistry comment above).

You can post your beautiful poems anywhere you want to- and post any of your poem, as far as I am concerned- as long as you are prepared for not getting the responses you want, that is, as long as you are prepared to the fact that some people will not care for your poems. It’s a difficult thing to be prepared for.

But someone won’t care or even dislike your poem/s. Hey, someone reading this is disliking what I am writing to you right now. So, am I going to erase it? Ask myself: how do I write to Shirley so that not she, not anyone will reject any of it? If I am guided by this latter thought, I won’t be writing anything at all, or if I will, it will be so vague as to stand for nothing, indicate nothing.

Are you prepared for such….think about it?

anita