If I’d’a known you could
just create a new holiday
around loving to write,
I’d have done so when

I was about 10, sitting in
the old leaning tower of oak
in my parents’ backyard,
nestled in the crook

of the main trunk and two
slender horizontal arms,
so held by ages of strength,
wisdom and healing,

notebook in lap, having
no idea where the words
came from, just that they
arrived and fell on the page,

transporting me elsewhere,
so happily lost that every
so often I’d fall out of the tree,
rudely brought back to earth.

But it didn’t stop me from
climbing back into those
welcoming arms, settling in
again to write, having no

idea that I was already a
lifelong student of words,
apprenticing at a craft that
pleases me still, that I was

already a writer simply
because I wrote, having no
no idea what I had to say
until the words appeared

under my scribbling
(and eventually typing)
fingers… like this
and this and this.