A year ago, I finally wrote the query email that sold my book. With no internet access at home, I wrote the email in a corner of a public hallway in Montpelier, my back up against the literal as well as proverbial wall. I began, I’m going to go out on a limb here…

Later that afternoon, in a cold December rain, the day before Christmas break at my daughter’s school, I stood on the asphalt talking with her teacher, who, in his kind way, asked about our vacation plans while I willed myself not to begin crying. My entire world, interior and exterior, was suffused with dreary rainfall. I had no idea what would happen that afternoon, let alone in the next two weeks.

That was almost exactly a year ago. Did it take all of my life to write those words? To edge so far out on that limb there was no conceivable way I might crawl back?

The press published Leland Kinsey, a Vermont poet of phenomenal strength and beauty, a poet whose vision of the world cuts sharply, bloody at the bone, with rare grace. So much has happened in this year of my life, and yet, every time I sit down to write, I remind myself again that’s what I’m aiming for: push.

TO OUR VERMONT FATHER ON HIS EARLY WINTER BIRTHDAY

Our father who is in hospital,
hallowed be your name
though you are hollowed.
Your kingdom gone,
your will undone
on this earth, and there is no heaven.
You gave us, until this day, our daily bread.
and you forgave us our debts,
though you could not forgive your other debtors.
A fierce Scot, you were not led into temptation.
and tried to deliver us from evil.
You worked your life in the Northeast Kingdom
with power,
and no glory,
ever.

— Leland Kinsey