About Time: Poems

By Diane Mintz

These poems are borne of the joy and pain of a life lived to the fullest. Diane Mintz writes of hunger and need, loving and living and overcoming. She celebrates  intimate moments, the rough patches, the smallest revelations of unsung beauty. These poems abound with tender and compassionate images of the human condition.

I want to write a poem as elegant as old lace,
as simple and airy as a child's rhyme,
as soft and loved as a stuffed animal,
as welcoming as an old slipper, as easy to slip on.
A poem in which I can open my most tender secrets
to the trusted and compassionate reader who takes in
the words knowingly, securing them inside her secret place
where she will turn to them often for solace.... 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diane Mintz
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215370131

Diane Mintz

DIANE MINTZ was born in Newark, New Jersey where she lived until her family moved to California when she was 9. With the exception of graduate school and travel, she has spent her adult life in Berkeley where she got her B.A. from UC Berkeley and raised her two sons. She has worked as a teacher, an editor,  a translator, a secretary, a newspaper reporter and a realtor (while founding a nonprofit, YES.Families.org), all while stashing  her writings in drawers.  This is the first time some of her writing has been allowed the light of day.

Book preview

ABOUT TIME

poems

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© Copyright 2023

by Diane Mintz

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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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DRAFT2DIGITAL EDITION

Formatting & Production:

D. Patrick Miller • Fearless Literary

www.fearlessbooks.com

Cover Design:

Helene Berinsky

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C O N T E N T S

Miracles

That Poem

Urban Turkeys

Uncertainty

Loss of Words

Tense

A Stitch in Time

Feet on the Ground

Morning Walk

A Walk with God

Ants

Pandemic Treats

Weeds

Sex

DNA

Do Habits Die?

Open Book

Kindness

They Also Serve

Breathing

Deep Cleaning

Afternoon Dog Walk

Walking in the Others’ Shoes

Broken Hallelujah

Promise Me

Light

Selfless

Moon Shadow

Thinking of Yeats

Gone for Good

Survivors

Sportsman

Grandma

An Early Story

J’Accuse

Monday is Yellow

Approval

Blood Type

Daddy

Post-Op

The Junk Dealer

A Delicate Balance

The Olive Orchard

In the Beginning

Blues

Moving Forward

Blotted Out

Belonging

About Time

To Mark

Miracles (inspired by Albert Einstein)

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Nothing is a miracle or everything is.

Unlike relativity, this idea is graspable.

Alert and awake everything can evoke

wonder. We can be struck with awe

at the caterpillar inching toward a juicy leaf,

at the delicate tracery on the leaf, at the

caterpillar’s tenacity hanging on to the leaf

swaying in the breeze, at its persistence in

pursuit of its goal, at the very existence of

this being and that it knows when and how to

wrap itself into a disguise of its own making

while it magically transforms into another miracle,

a being so unlike the earthbound caterpillar

that we would doubt its origin had we not just

watched it emerge unfolding its nascent wings.

That Poem

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I want to write a poem as elegant as old lace,

as simple and airy as a child’s rhyme,

as soft and loved as a stuffed animal,

as welcoming as an old slipper, as easy to slip on.

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A poem in which I can open my most tender secrets

to the trusted and compassionate reader who takes in

the words knowingly, securing them inside her secret place

where she will turn to them often for