Just the Girls

I am wildly excited that The Poetry Box Press has published my poetry chapbook: Just the Girls: A
Kaleidoscope of Butterflies; A Drift of Honeybees. Scheduled for release in mid-August 2020, this book is a
culmination of many years of writing and thinking about the ways in which various women in my life have
influenced, helped, and supported me.

The oldest poem in the book—“What I Want to Know”—was written at least 25 years ago. It is a comment on
all of the roadside trash that I see along the side of the road. In particular, it is set in California on the highway
from Sacramento to Placerville.

Newer poems in the collection are the yoga poems. Once I started practicing yoga, I found that the experience
was calming and “fed” my creativity. When traveling, I try to find local yoga studios where I can practice and
see how others approach the entire business of yoga. Thus…yoga poems in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida,
Ohio, Massachusetts. I expect to add more yoga poems as the years pass and my travels resume (post COVID-
19)!

I wrote the newest poems for my daughter, daughter-in-law, nieces (they are the poems printed in the last third
of the chapbook). In fact, the entire collection is something that I put together as a Christmas gift for these
talented, smart, savvy, hardworking young women. And, then, The Poetry Box picked up the book for
publication. I hope that many women see themselves in this chapbook. As my friend, Marta, has said: In this
life, we get to win.