Gabi Grubb Boeken

Faith is a celebration of life and of the lives of loved ones lost. Some of the poems, such as Putting on a Show, Life Lives on in a Smile and Together Forever, are in free verse and chart some of life's difficult journeys. They have emerged from real events and they simply tell the story of what happened, of how solace pops up from the most surprising sources, of how our world of perpetual change constantly rolls along. The quartet of See, Hear, Speak and Do No Evil was born from observation of the damage that is done when evil is perpetuated. Some of the poems are in traditional forms. The World, A Song for an Unknown Future and Counting Rowan Buds are triolets. Lucky in Life and This Perfect Life are sestinas; and The Corrosive "if only" is a villanelle.

Miranda arrives in an ocean paradise with husband Jim and most of the usual group for their annual dive holiday. Their daughter is grown up and living on the other side of the world. She and Jim have no special ties after a lifetime of travel. As she observes her companions she reflects on how the island is shaped to accommodate the tourist trade that is the region's life's blood. This year's Bathroom Cockroach seems particularly watchful; the low bushes rustle oddly as though they too are watching; and burgers on the breakfast buffet (beef ... out here?). She senses something incongruous from the moment she sets foot on the soft white sand.

Take a fragment, a shard of something, a piece of nothing. Take this fragment and place it upon the ground; look at it, feel it and imagine it. Take another fragment, and then another, and soon you will discover a mosaic, a picture made of words, a silent world constructed of possibility and wonder. Within these few pages, within these few words, fragments are to be found; fragments that hold within themselves gently glowing associations and nudges. Put the fragments together, place them in a safe place and then you will find the mosaic, the picture that makes up part of you and part of me