Gifts Instead of Burdens

Dear Mary,

I came across your poetry via a dear friend and can honestly say, as I say of only a few writers and books in the thousands I've read, that your work has made my life both richer and more focused. Your poems on sorrow and suffering have encouraged me to see these as gifts instead of only burdens; your poems describing the natural world have made me see more clearly and desire to develop my sight every day -- with greater clarity not only of the physical world but of what we can see in it. Yours is the only poetry I've been able to share with my husband, who is not a reader of literature, but he "gets" your images and it has been a bridge between us we've never had in over three decades of marriage. I long to learn to "keep my mind on what matters. . .  which is mostly standing still and learning to be / astonished" -- and you have helped me toward that frame of mind. Thank you, and God be with you.

Beth Impson