Our little church has a poet. I'll resist
saying, "Though some don't know it." That would be sooo tacky. But we do have a
poet. Her name is Cynthia, and she is our poet laureate. I don't suppose a lot
of churches have an official poet, but we do. What I like best is that no one
can remember exactly how or when she became our poet. I think she just stepped
into the job gently and over time. I remember she wrote one after 9-11. And I
remember some that she's read at our summer talent shows. She made me cry with a
poem
at Ben's retirement thingy. And some of her work appears in our prayer book from
time to time. By the way, Cynthia is the
woman who brought that prayer book to our
church.
However it happened, she writes poems,
some of them for us, and we all know it.
I've been pestering Cynthia to start a blog for
a LONG time. The problem was, she had this classified government job many years
ago, and when she left she had to agree to submit anything she wanted to publish
to the government for approval first. I'm afraid this stipulation can
make blogging a little more complicated than it is intended to be. So no blog
for Cynthia. This was particularly frustrating because everything she knows
about the government was declassified years ago.
But recently a very good addendum to the law
allows for innocent publishing of poems and the like without having to submit
them in triplicate to a secret government agency or anything. And so our friend
and poet is free to post, publish, or do whatever she wants with her poems. This
is good news for you and me, because it means we don't have to worry about
reading one of her poems and then having to be killed for it. So relax, we're all going to be
fine.
One last thing. Often when someone tells you
that his friend is a poet, you expect that person to be "cutesy" good at best.
You expect to read a poem or two out of politeness, and then try to think of
something nice to say about them. Not
this time. This woman is seriously good. I won't spend any time trying to
convince you of this because you can go and
read her work for yourself.
Cynthia, welcome to the world of blogging.
....It's
about time.

rlp