In late May of 2008, I found myself living alone for the first time since 1991.  My then-husband had decamped.  My son accepted a position in a summer exchange program.  I faced an unexpected question:  Could I survive with only myself for company?

I began posting a weekly essay to the Small Firm Internet Group of the Missouri Bar, (SFIG), in its infancy as a rollicking e-mail listserve of solo and small firm attorneys throughout Missouri.  My first few posts consisted of poems from a little book of verses written by soldiers in World War I.  The favorable reception invigorated the writer whom I had suppressed within the depths of my fractured soul.  The Missouri Mugwump emerged from a thirty-eight year cocoon and stretched her wings.

Every so often, my own words do not fit the mood or occasion in which I wish to make an offering.  Such a time arises tonight.  After an evening with members of the community in which I live, I find myself unable to articulate anything more than timid gratitude.  So, let me offer words of a writer greater than I ever considered it possible for me to become.  Take what meaning you might; or simply luxuriate in the perfection of these tender syllables.

Dust of Snow
BY Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

It’s the ninth day of the sixty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Crow in a southern-facing tree on the San Joaquin; Andrus Island, the California Delta Loop.