[Susan McLean]

https://newversenews.blogspot.com/20...d-version.html

Wonderful poem, Julie.

Susan

[mignon ledgard]

Yay, Julie, contratulations!
Thanks, Susan, for announcing and posting the link.
~m

[W T Clark]

Well-deserved!!

[Matt Q]

Congrats, Julie! As Cameron says, it's well deserved.

[Julie Steiner]

Thanks very much.

I'm sure we all have elusive poems that have obsessed us for years, but that have resisted being written to our satisfaction. This was one of those. Over several decades I kept tinkering with it for a while, then putting it on the back burner to simmer some more.

Then last March there was at least one news story about child sexual abuse for several days running (see the dates of the epigraphs), and I thought I should really give it another go. It felt wonderfully liberating to have actually finished it.

The downside, of course, is that now I'm tempted to look at things in my slush pile that really should stay in my slush pile, and think, "Hmmm, maybe I gave up on this dud too soon, too...."