Welcome. 

I bid you good morning or good evening.  Or even good afternoon, if that is the case.  Thank you for joining me here today.

Shel Silverstein begins his book Where the Sidewalk Ends with a poem called “Invitation.”

It goes like this:

If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .
 If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire,
For we have some flax golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

This is my own invitation to you.  Join me for a time.  Join me in thought and reflection.  Travel places with me.  Learn from me and teach me something in return.

I have my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends right beside me on a TV tray next to my end of the sofa.  This TV tray has held no food in countless months, but it makes a nice pedestal for favorite books and letters heaped high.  Magazines aplenty.  And remote controls for TV, Blu-Ray, stereo receiver, and Dish.

All the things that draw a person’s attention away from writing, thinking, creating, relating.

This particular classic left the bookshelf for its tour of the living room after my son, Jakey, was born.  We tried to read to him every day from his first crying, sleeping, eating, crying, sleeping days.

Children’s books are great…

But, I soon found my own attention could not last reading and rereading the same short books to an infant with almost no attention span of his own at all.  Out came Shel Silverstein.  Down from the shelf came volumes of Robert Service poetry and my complete works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Rhymes, creativity, depth and form.

Works of language masters flowed between my lips and his small, perfect ears.  We covered other masters, too, like Fox in Socks and a short foray into Shakespeare’s sonnets.  I found the latter proved too taxing when I tried to manage my impassioned iambic pentameter and still keep the lolling, fussing baby on my lap.

The baby is asleep.  For now.  His ghost-white head gleams at me from the screen of his video baby monitor (placed so conveniently on another TV tray).

I’ve spun tales and dreamed words for many years.  What I hope will grow from here forward is a home for some of this spinning and dreaming.

Thank you for joining me.

Come in…