I got a book over the weekend from one of the regular readers here, Jilly Dybka. Y’all know her, she is always kind.  She has never gotten in a skirmish of any kind on this blog. She’s just nice that’s all so you might imagine my surprise when I opened her book of poetry and found myself in tears reading the very first poem on the very first page.

I felt enormously humbled. I just can’t believe the quality of the group that gathers here. I have Capricorn feelings about it – What do these people see in me?  It’s not that I don’t know the answer to that it’s just that well…

Well check out, Jilly for yourself and maybe you’ll see what I mean. When people who can write like this read your writing it boggles the mind.

Jilly writes:

Bop: Parkinson’s

I circle around his illness, because
my father used to be daddy, but now
he is old. We talk about the weather.
His sickbed body is a small mirror,
a bauble too fragile to be a toy.
Been hot up here, and a stormy summer.

Then he says I love you.

The shock of the words is born inside me.
12 amps without a fuse. The Milky Way
becomes complete and all the wild horses
on every plain pause at rest. He must be
cashing out his till. Tying up loose ends.
How long did it take him to muster the
will to say those words, lying there in bed?
A little mouse replies: I love you too.

Then he says I’m proud of you.

Thanks, dad, the little mouse replies again.
Once he was Buddha behind the counter:
no one is ever gonna tell you you’ve
suffered enough, kiddo not looking up
from his marked-up racing form.
See you Christmas, I lie, and say goodbye.
Then he says goodbye.

Jilly Dybka

You can buy her book, “Trouble And Honey” here. You can download it for free at the same place but if you’ve got the $7.77, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with the hard copy in your collection.

Congratulations, Jilly. Your work is excellent and moved me to my core.