A Stream Keeps Running

This is an unusual poetry book. The first version was completed in 2014, and three years later, this 47th edited version is the final one. Life and death are embraced in four chapters, much like the four movements in a violin concerto. Con Moto (with Motion), Dolce (Sweetly), Morendo (Dying) and Con Brio (with Spirit). There are poems for family members: children, grandchildren and wife. There are poems in various forms: sonnet, tanka sequence, villanelle, free verse, and haiku style poems. Tempo, accent, pause, repetition, meter and rhyme intersperse with the words, the notes, the stanzas and the music. This book is a tapestry woven from the threads of the beginning of life, with eight grandchildren aged one to nine (one born almost every year) to the near-death ordeal of a fading life. But life is not over yet. It is a prayer, a naked sincerity, a longing, "A Stream Keeps Running."