Take Any Ship That Sails

This 5th book of Michele’s spans 45 years of writing poems and thou-sands of miles of geography. It is a selection of poems from when Michele was in her teens in Pennsylvania to recent poems inspired by the beautiful mountains and Mesas of New Mexico. There are poems from Monterey and Marin counties, California. From times spent writing at Esalen in Big Sur. A few are from her time in Hawaii. They cover nature, love, art, and personal growth. There are some of free verse and classical form.

Her favorite poets are many, including the Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz, the English and Irish poets, including Seamus Heaney. If you love poetry, this is a book for you.

For decades, Michele’s life centered around birth, in obstetrics and gynecology as a nurse practitioner. At the same time, her creativity was flourishing; “I was always taking pictures and writing poetry.” Now that medical world has drifted into the past, the poetic and visual arts fill her time, producing images of beauty and heart.

After receiving her R.N. in Pennsylvania and moving to California, she expanded her career at UCSF studying OB-GYN and becoming a Nurse Practitioner. The last fifteen years of her career was spent in Monterey County working with Mexican farm workers in the Salinas Valley.

In addition to her professional work, nature filled her life at home on a 6,000-acre ranch at the north end of the Big Sur Wilderness where she was caretaker for the park district of Monterey. These are the links that shape her poems and travel over the years complete the chain; West Africa with the Peace Corps, learning Spanish in Costa Rica and Mexico, scuba diving the coasts of California, Hawaii, Fiji, and Micronesia. These are a few places that merge to feed Michele’s imagination and gift for lyric imagery.