Respectful disagreement
is much more compassionate than
disrespectful agreement*
could ever even hope to be.

I well recall encouraging
in the early days,
sending messages to and from,
what was beyond and in between,
what lay between a woman's
wind tossed
heart
and her
breathless, winded,
words

these spaces,
so wonderfully human
and fine,
that we better
recognize
their existence
in ourselves,
through her words

motives purely
selfish, then, I guess,
words pearly,
gifted and given,
how we find the same language,
forges all
our contexts,
with a binding grace,
that elevates us all
beyond and un-between,
above
life's grays

I well recall the
rare, early days here,
when communitas was the
only guiding principle,
seldom was heard
a discouraging word,
how sharing each other's
innermost,
was
the most,
the finest,
expression of the ultimate humanity
inner,
that we choose to accept,
when wearing the
poetry cloak,
a notional emotional
grace
supra-national
in a shared world heritage site,
that no one poet could ever hope to obtain alone

I thank you
once more,
one more,
time and time again,
for the bloom
of your rose,
gifted to all we
itinerant dabblers,
in a world where
words and will,
literary and love,
transforms and re-forms
each other
with the constancy-frequency
glowing alliteration of
an early morn Florida sunrise

you are among the best of us,
we will brook
no,
this denying,
keep us together,
be the poetic glue,
the ganglia connecting us,
this ragtag band
of brothers
and
sisters,

after all this
are we,
not the lucky ones
who read, observe, feel,
and love the special aura of
the poetess

Ketoma Rose*
~~
with affection
nat