I think the essential sense and message of a poem often has meaning only to the poet who wrote it! Here then, are my own thoughts, many of them say that I love you in different ways—to one another, to the Earth, the Moon, to a strawberry or a daffodil.

Begun in 1958, they were inspired by dreams, visions, recollections, people, or just while doing the dishes or driving around in nature. I also included some poems by other writers.

I began calligraphing them in an old ledger, as it was the only paper I had at the time—and I continued using it later on.

Flowers and leaves were collected wherever I went—as far away as Japan, Jamaica, and Peru. Pressed and dried between book pages, they were then applied to each poem. Over the years, I copied them one by one, at Kinko’s.

Perhaps in the future, someone opening one of my old books will come upon a perfectly preserved, forgotten flower I left behind—a token of good thoughts for the reader!

Gwendolyn Shire