Moon Burn

My friend and fellow poet, Jayne Pupek, died this week and I am deeply saddened by her death. I have been going through the emails we shared over the last 4 years and I have found that within the letters she sent to me there is much discussion on writing. She befriended me (the new writer) within the confines of writers workshop, a place akin to the Betty Ford Clinic for Poets. We write. Simply. She took time to send me encouraging words, suggestions on places to submit, funny stories (we shared a wicked sense of humor)and we became friends. Of all of my fellow writers her and I shared many things in common, we were both Southerners, of the same age, mothers to teenagers, both successful in other careers, insatiably curious, and neither one of us took ourselves too seriously. I realized that I wrote over 200 poems with her and my other cohorts, supporting each other, whispering words of encouragement, it is a safe house. I am reading and rereading my emails, I hope to be able to sit down and pull out tidbits of our conversations on writing. What comes across to me is not the truly gifted writer but the wonderful person she was, she had an incredible beauty and generosity of spirit, she shone. I remember her as she is with her words, quirky, vibrant, challenging and full of grace and generosity of spirit. She rocked, She was one of my personal heroines, she challenged me. She will be deeply missed.

Moon Burn: A phrase my sister Sherri coined in a galaxy far far away ( a pasture in east Texas, in the last century) one I have always loved. This moon is why I get up at 4:30 to swim, there is something pagan about swimming under moonlight, perhaps in another incarnations of light, I was a pagan moon worshiper.