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Recorded Reading (3:35): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hhlveekm9zsjrf0s9vhu9/Joyful-Return.mp3?rlkey=m4kdc831d2ivkhi78t46byyf3&st=gzie1cvm&dl=0

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Readers on this site will recall the announcement of a sabbatical recently, when all the online files full of the poet’s thousands of collected works suddenly became unavailable to her, and she faced the task of recovering each poem, play, song, essay and commentary, one by one, from this or other sites of their original publication and pasting them back into new files of her own.

She didn’t bring every work forward with her ~ that effort would have required months rather than weeks.

In reviewing her public offerings over these last ten years, the poet found that she had, by habit, dedicated at least as much space in her websites to quotations from other thinkers and writers, both contemporary and historical, as she had to her own ~ as well as dedicating significant space to timely and uplifting social commentary, with the combination of these, as well, iterlarded with increasingly pressured attempts to alert her society to an imminent and significant threat.

All of these she left behind her (though some of those quotes were excellent, and might reappear here in the future), bringing into her new reality only the relatively eternal energy of the poetic, dramatic and literary works themselves.

Oh, from back in the years of her first poetic online presence ~ giddy days of generating an average of two new works in every one ~ sometimes half a dozen (on one memorable occasion she remembers sitting cross-legged in her tent all night long, cackling madly at times, weeping at others, and turning out, by dawn, a total of one dozen individually significant new works!) ~ she found pieces she’d forgotten all about!…

But now that great labor is finished, and this weary poet so happily returns ~ to her readers, to her coauthors, and to her online work.

She plans a veritable orgy of reading this weekend… 

*****

Joyful Return

How joyfully do I return
My online friends unto
Acquaintance with your writings
Freely to renew

Wonderful encouragement
And inspiration here I find
As makes maintaining, easily,
Lofty vision — all are mine

Exhortations courage to
In vile face deep injustice of,
Reminders of compassion,
Beautiful defense of love,

Accounts of wild adventures
All over this Earth,
Affirmations of intrinsic
Spiritual worth

For every single one of us,
With no one left behind —
The highest sort of nourishment
For fueling a creative mind

To read the works of every friend
Each day’s impossible to do
Must row by row my garden tend:
There are so many, now, of you!

Throughout both of these endless weeks
To read your lovely words I’ve burned ~
What a sweet, profound relief
It is to have returned!

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

Arts patrons may visit http://www.UgiftABLE.com , using code 72D-31S. It will take about two weeks for the poet to be notified of your patronage.

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