Some of my poetry comes to me in the forms of songs. In fact, on several occasions, I have pulled over while driving to sing into my phone so I don’t forget the words and melody in my head. I wrote my first songs in junior high, and I performed a couple of the faith-oriented ones at my church (where I also played the piano with the folk choir). I wrote quite a few more in high school after I learned to play the guitar - it was much easier to just put chords with my lyrics than it was to sit at the piano and notate the melodies. Many of these songs were about the “loves and losses” I experienced in high school - though one, titled “Put Your Trust in Me,” is still one of my favorites. Another that I wrote during this time, “Footprints in the Sand,” reflects the influence John Denver had on my songwriting and thinking.

When I lived in Japan from 1990-92, I wrote a whole collection of songs about women in the Bible that I still hope to see “go somewhere” someday. Some of these I performed as part of the Osaka International Church band in which I was the lead singer (that was fun!). One that we performed was about Deborah; the other about Esther. My favorites from that collections are “Daughters,” which talks about Christ’s ministry to women,” and “A Rose of Sharon,” based on the “Song of Solomon” in the Old Testament.

Some of my more recent songs have tackled social and political issues - refugees and immigrants, California fires and climate change, the pandemic, injustice, and war. For a while I was performing at Open Mics and playing my guitar a bit more often, then Covid hit, and my guitar mostly got put away. I finally pulled it out last spring to play for our 21st LGHS Fractured Follies, which took place after a three year break. I was thrilled to be joined on stage by my son Aaron and some other teachers for our rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

It was out 20th Fractured Follies, though, that made me most proud. A group of us performed my song “Phoenix,” which I wrote about the deadly fires up in Paradise, California, and I LOVE how the song sounds with the additional guitar, violin, and backup voices, as well as my good friend and fellow English teacher Kathleen dancing as a phoenix. I was even more excited when I read that someone had actually carved a phoenix statue at the entrance to Paradise. That year, we raised money for the North Valley Community Foundation, which was helping victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise. It all just felt right. I have links to two versions of that song below - the one we performed at Fractured Follies, and another that some of us recorded in a studio.

Finally, I’m including a link to a Tutorial Talk I gave in April 2020 in honor of National Poetry Month. We were all in lock-down, but I wanted to share my thoughts on poetry with my students (and others) and keep up the tradition of “tutorial talks,” which was mostly put on hold during Covid. I also performed a few songs to include with the talk, so you can see the links to those below as well. They are certainly not “professional recordings,” or even close, but you can get an idea of the lyrics and melody. You can see also see these videos on my Youtube Channel.