It's a new year, and I am blessed. My book of poetry, Traces of Presence, published by Dr. Sue Walker, Negative Capability Press, is now available. Poet friend, Joe Whitten, author of Learning to Tell Time says:

    Betty Spence chooses words for her poems as carefully as a master quilter chooses colors for a prize-winning quilt. She sees the joyful pattern of nature as “red feathers dusting green feeder” and longleaf pines that “needle point a piece of Alabama sky.” For her, Vincent van Gogh “paints not what is, but what seems/ in seeming swirls of yellow and orange.” Betty’s faith is stitched into the fabric of her poems, for she hears the pink and blue asters “telling the glory of God” and sees the coast of Main as “God’s Rock Garden.” Be inspired by the poems in Traces of Presence.

     Here are a few short poems from the book.

Uncurtained Window

What-cheer, red feathers
dusting green feeder swinging
on black shepherd’s hook.

Call For Calendar Reform

Tell me Spring’s not the time
to ring out the old; ring in the new.

Tell me the time of white blossoms
with a hint of pink is not the time

for bees to buzz the cup; not the time
for meadow grass to throw serpentine;

not the time for Yellow Jasmine
to trumpet strains of Auld Lang Syne.

Hey, you! You in the party hat.
Tell me the calendar didn’t say that.

Stitchery

as open and airy

as stanzas allowing

a sky blue canvas
to show through,
one evergreen stitch
at a time
Longleaf Pines
n   e   e   d   l   e   p   o   i   n   t
a piece of Alabama sky.

To order books:
Betty Spence
3446 LaCoste Road
Mobile, AL 36618
251-649-4892

$15 + $2.50 S&H