Thanks Erica

for opening my eyes
& mind with "Fear of Flying"
bringing me closer
to my sisters - literal & lateral

back in '98
"Fear of Fifty"
found me a forty-niner
brewing over fifty
and all it signifies

serendipity took me
into a bookshop
where you leapt off the shelf
with your mid-life memoir
and once again
blew me away

sure there are differences
race, religion, gender, space & time
but it's the universals that transcend
that struck the deepest chords within

found the fearful child
the skinny short nine-year old
half-Welsh, half-English
clever, shy and over-educated
transplanted to rural Australia
in the fifties - worlds away
doctor's son becomes chameleon
politely through the WASP system
'til the late sixties hit a hidden trigger
rebellion in the slumbering air

forty odd years pass - chameleon survives
making mistakes of the heart
facing the Sir Galahad syndrome
no more rescuing, no more victims
no more marriages, no more divorce
a mantra for the millennium

thanks Erica
for echoing my thoughts
"shit, I'm supposed to be the grown-up"
for clarifying the writer's right
to take our space and time
because we've got to do it
and then,
facing the fear of success
the ego challenge of publishing
the constant revision

thanks Erica

for your gifts