Warrior Soul

By Eileen McManus

Warrior Soul is a collection of poems written over a period of twenty five years. It mirrors a woman who was faced with a debilitating illness and the challenge of building a life on a trail not taken by most.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469747187

Eileen McManus

Eileen McManus lives and works in the Bronx, New York. As well as being a metal health consumer/survivor, she has worked as a professional counselor. Her main love is writing. She shares a house with her cat, Snowball and her family.

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Copyright © 2012 by Eileen McManus.

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-4717-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-4718-7 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 01/28/2012

CONTENTS

Battle Cheer

1987

THe Cliff of Eternity

In Memory of Flight

GRIEF

LADIES IN WAITING

NO MAN’S LAND

SEASONS

NIGHT LIGHTS

HOURGLASS

DESERT CHILDREN

FISHING

ON THE INDIAN BURIAL GROUND

BORN IN THE USA

BALLADS OF THE LADY

TO HELEN, MY COUSIN

RUMINATIONS

IN A STILL MOMENT

WINTER LULLABY

THE WAKE UP YEARS

THE CASTLE

To Jerry

FOR TED

A WOMAN WALKING THE

LINE OF TIME

UNTITLED

On A Winter Afternoon

THE GARGOYLE

A RANT OF RHYME

THE HEREAFTER

DREAMING IN A WAKING STATE

WARRIOR SOUL

Night In Little Italy

WOVEN WINGS AND WONDERINGS

Winter, 1996

RETREAT INTO ISOLATION

SQUARE GOLDEN HALO

NORWOOD AT DUSK

THE PITCHER

ONE JANUARY EVENING

WHEN BLOOM CROCUS

The Counseling Years

THE FAT LADY

FlOWER MAKER

Heat Wave

WOOING THE MUSE

THE BREAKFAST BALL

KEYCHAIN FOR A BLUE PLYMOUTH

TRAVELING HOME FROM MANHATTAN

MARNIE

SLEEP BROKEN BY AN APRIL STORM

The Millennium

SWAN SONG FOR MARIO

TO CHRIS

ODE TO MOTHERHOOD

Winter 2012

To Maria Regina Pax, and my father

Battle Cheer

Oh, how frightened you are, to bring together a manuscript, to contact an agent, to begin to bring to fruition the long-ago plan.

Let the games begin!

Play then, and play your best. Play well, play deadly and play brilliant.

Play as God plays his sunsets—with no apologies, with flambuoyant and shameless pride, with piercing beauty and sheer pleasure in the playing.

Play to kill, and let no emotional enemy go undestroyed.

Play for victory, and know that failure is not an option.

The streets of New York were desolate in the early nineteen eighties. I had left in 1977 with a roaring crowd of Bronx Science graduates, all jubilantly pursuing success and fortune in many, varied, and often prestigious and elite colleges and universities.

It might have been a chance word or a particularly disturbing conversation which might have seemed innocuous, but after a year in Pennsylvania at Franklin and Marshall College, something unsettling began to happen. It started with bad and frightening dreams, and then anxiety and panic began to boil and bubble in my center, making relationships and study difficult. Rather than wait around to see what explosion might erupt, I packed up and returned home, to a town that had drastically changed. It was bereft of middle class society, broken, ravaged, and on the verge of bankruptcy.

I faced the choice of dropping out of