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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

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