What Have You Lost? - Hardcover

In Her Own Words...

Since my books have been some of my best friends all my life, being involved in the making of books is the luckiest, happiest thing I can imagine.

The day Virginia Duncan, my editor for many years now, wrote me her first note stands among my most shining days. She had read some of my poems and asked if I had thought of writing children's books. This is what I tell young writers: when you send your poems out into the world, you have no idea what friends they might find. Thank you, Virginia.

As a child I read all the time. I got lost and found in books, and still do. They are my refuge, escape, my endless journey. (At this moment I have fourteen books on my bedside table and forty-eight books stacked on my dresser.)

I was also fascinated by my mother's small red diary that she had kept as a girl. Her penmanship was exquisitely and perfectly slanted, a talent I did not inherit. She rarely wrote more than "Saw movie. Got new dress." I wanted to know more details. What color was the dress? I would beg, during our steamy afternoons as she peeled peaches for cobbler and I lay on the floor thumbing through her early life. "I have no idea!" she'd exclaim. "You think I can remember everything?"

I started keeping my own notebooks because I wanted to remember everything. The quilt, the cherry tree, the creek. The neat whop of a baseball rammed perfectly with a bat. My father's funny Palestinian stories. The feeling of breeze as my brother and I rode our bicycles down the hill. The blood-red stain of a ripe strawberry on my fingertips; the rich smell of earth at Mueller's Organic Farm a few blocks from our house.

How lucky we were to have a farm in our neighborhood! My first job was picking berries. I thought about poems as I meandered among damp rows. Thirty-four summers later my photographer- husband, Michael, our son, Madison, and I went to pick berries there again, same farm, same fields, same farmers. Suddenly everything in my life connected.

Familiar sights, sounds, smells have always been my necessities. Let someone else think about future goals and professional lives! I will keep track of the bucket and the hoe, billowing leaves, and the clouds drifting in from the horizon.

Whenever someone asks why I write about "ordinary things," I wonder, "Well, what do you have in YOUR life?" Writing saved me when my family moved to Jerusalem, my father's hometown, and during my years at Trinity University in Texas. I have spent twenty-five years working as a visiting writer with students of all ages. I write essays as well as poems, children's books and songs as well as novels and stories for teens. Material is everywhere, free as air.

Now my husband, son, and I live in a house nearly a hundred years old, a block from the little river, in downtown San Antonio. We have a large wrap-around front porch with a swing, good to read in. The most important thing to me about any room is: how are the reading lamps? The new basketball court in our backyard was finished the same week our terrific Spurs team won the 1999 NBA Championship. Sometimes things fit together! Reading and writing help us see all the many ways this is true.

The Family Car by Tom Absher
Regrets On The Way To An Airport by Ali Abunimah
Father, Herald Me Home by Teresa Palomo Acosta
Nine by Amy Adams
Bittersweet by Lavonne J. Adams
Seeing For You by Linda Allardt
What We Want by Maggie Anderson
Garage Sale by Brian Andreas
The New Blade by Anzai Hitoshi
Last-minute Message For A Time Capsule by Philip Appleman
The Lost Glove Is Happy by Nuala Archer
Hitchhiker by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Custody by Jan Bailey
My Grandmother Told Us Jokes by Richard Beban
The Higher Reaches by Bruce Bennett
Simple Song Of Being Oneself by Vittorio Bodini
Lament by Catherine Bowman
Child Proof by Lisa Brandenburg
Wilderness Poem 2 by John Brandi
Raised Voices by Jack Brannon
Each Night by Jay Bremyer
Lens by Kimberly J. Brown
What Are Friends For, My Mother Asks by Rosellen Brown
Stranded by Jenny Browne
Insurance by Ernesto Cardenal
Someone Told Me You Were In Love by Ernesto Cardenal
The House At 5 Allende Street by Hector Carreto
The Colors Of Another Home by Cyrus Curtis Cassells
Unveiling The Vietnam Memorial by Fran Castan
The Changeling by Siv Cedering
Mindleaving by Hayan Charara
Tutu On The Curb by Eric Edward Chock
Battleground State Park by Martha Christina
Here Yet Be Dragons by Lucille Clifton
My Lost Father by Lucille Clifton
Processes by Joan Colby
Aqueducts by Brittney Corrigan
Letter To Terry Dobson by Abbot Cutler
Legend by Craig Czury
What The Stones Know by Robert Patrick Dana
She Had Thought by Phebe Davidson
Passing Necessity by Camille Domangue
Something I Remember by Linda Elkin
David by William I. Elliott
Sudden by Nick Flynn
Drifter, Owl, Mouse by Ken Fontenot
Waking Up In The Morning by Zymunt Frankel
Letter To An Ancestor by Dwight Fullingim
Valencia Street by Robert Funge
Divorce by Jack Gilbert
I Myself by Angel Gonzalez
At Home by Linda Gregg
Organdy Curtains, Window, South Bank Of The Ohio by James Baker Hall
I Give You Back by Joy Harjo
Shrink-wrapped by Carla Hartsfield
My Father In The Stacks by David Hassler
Thinking Of What The Jury Is Deliberating by Mick Hatten
Autumn Quince by Jane Hirshfield
The Question by Tony Hoagland
Secret Of Life by Diana Der Hovanessian
And Sometimes I Hear This Song In My Head by Harriet Jacobs
It Was Here by Rolf Jacobsen
First Grade by Roger Jones
What Great Grief Has Made The Empress Mute by June Jordan
Going Home by Ben Judson
Model Of The Heart At The Franklin Institute by Kasey Jueds
Ghazal (for William Stafford) by David Keefe
What Came To Me by Jane Kenyon
Where On This Earth by Patricia Kirkpatrick
Son, Skating by Judith Kitchen
Year's End by Ted Kooser
Christmas by Lan Se
The New World by Sandra Larson
I Never Saw The Road Between Our by Donna Lee
Dreaming Them Into The World Again by Tina Letcher
How Forgetting Works In Late Winter by Robert Hill Long
This Isn't Fair by Chris Mahon
Naming by Nancy Pedrick Mairs
The Moment For Which There Is No Name by Morton Jay Marcus
Flood: Years Of Solitude by Dionisio D. Martinez
Benavides, Texas, 1906 by Marissa C. Martinez
The Wren by Barbara Mccauley
My Father's Coat by Susie Mee
The Father, Who Could Not Swim by William Joseph Meissner
Waking Instructions by Emma Mellon
Cannon Beach by Susan V. Meyers
Teenagers by Pat Mora
Driving by Haas H. Mroue
Shedding Skin by Harryette Mullen
Leaving The Light On by Jack Myers
Kind by Leonard Edward Nathan
So Far by Naomi Shihab Nye
Returning To The West: Mountain Legend by Denise Overfield
Small Town by Charles Owsley
Song Of The Prodigal Son by Heberto Padilla
Fame by Nicanor Parra
Devotion by Chris Pealer
My Valhalla by Robert Phillips
Avalanche by David B. Prather
Words My Friend Can't Bring Himself To Say by Quintin Prout
Truth by Leroy V. Quintana
The Black And The Dazzle by Tom Rea
Tune by Frances Richard
That Was The Summer We Had Animals by Jack Rogers Ridl
Work by Geoff Rips
Invisibility by Renato Rosaldo
Other Lives by Vern Rutsala
That King Of Marriage by John Sangster
The Memory Prayer by John Phillip Santos
Food. Music. Memory by Susan Marie Scavo
Silence by Peter Sears
What Gets Lost/lo Que Se Pierde by Peter Sears
Plum Trees by Alison Seevak
A Serenade by Sekine Hiroshi
Learning Persian by Reza Shirazi
What Was Once Reached For by Jeffrey Shotts
Orange Juice by Lisa Ruth Shulman
Travelling Light by Kirsti Katariina Simonsuuri
Emergency Situation by Hal Sirowitz
Dream House by Margo Solod
Journey by Cathy Song
The Sparrow And The Crumb by Nathan Spoon
Any Morning by William Edgar Stafford
What Grandma Taught Her by Melissa A. Stephenson
Almost Evenly Divided by Emma Suarez-baez
The Ants Are Using Sticks For Walls by Sandra Gail Teichmann
The Forest Of My Hair by James Tolan
Today I'll Sit Still by Ernesto Trejo
Taking My Son To His First Day Of Kindergarten by William Trowbridge
The Mentalist Leaves The Stage by Memye Curtis Tucker
Barns Collapsing by John Vernon
Tough Ride by Mary Ann Wehler
On The Suicide Of A Young Boy I Did Not Know by Jennifer Weinblatt
Breath by David Williams
Part by Steve Wilson
A Game Nobody Won by Yamanoguchi Baku
Sister by Andy Young
Mother's Day by Daisy Zamora
Obituaries by Eric Zuckerman
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®