Having spent nearly four decades believing I knew my truth and trusting in all of life's secure foundations laid before me, it took losing a deep love to disintegrate everything at once, leaving me with only one unknown path to walk. What I believed about who I was and what life meant lay crumbled at my feet after love danced her last dance. Poetry proved to be a path out the mountains of shredded hope and dreams and into a liberated life of renewed faith. Only later would I glean the multitude of treasured gifts I was given by walking through the labyrinth of darkness and into the light. Some of it is very dark. Some of it is hopeful. Much of it is sad. All of it is real.