Spirit Within : Poems

Blessed with twenty-twenty vision, in The Spirit Within: Poems by Julie Marie, the poet sees with clarity small objects in nature surrounded by auras of far reaching significance. In "Wild Flowers," the poet writes, "No longer do the wildflowers ask, companionship of the grass." Perceptions of flowers and ladies at a garden party seem to blend into one another in the poem titled "The Rain Comes Down". In the poem "Kyong," she describes a patient tended to by her mother: "A spirit flowed about the two,like burning incense." In "Alice," a nursing home patient lies curled up like a "fine pocket watch that has never been overwound." These are poems of delight in nature and insight into people. JULIE O'BRIEN SWANSON, or "Julie Marie," is a nurse who describes herself as "full of bright colors." She has raised two children in the California coastal city of Oceanside, where she enjoys her hobbies of gardening and painting, as well as working out in the gym.