Poem Published

Photo: A Florida Box Turtle, from the Wikipedia page for "turtle."  (You'll have to read below to get the connection between the title and the pic.)

Just a quick note:

My poem, "An Old Man," (which is not about an old man, per se; it's an extended metaphor, representative of all of us) has been accepted for publication by the good people at Lost Tower Publications, in the U.K.  It'll be in an anthology, Hope Springs A Turtle (Get it?  Instead of "Hope Springs Eternal?"), and 10% of the proceeds will be donated to Mind U.K., a mental health charity in the United Kingdom.  More details here. 

The anthology will be available in book form, and as an e-book.  I'll send another notice sometime later when the book and e-book are available.  It ain't Shakespeare, but at least now I can say I'm a published poet.  I've published a short story, a short nonfiction piece, and now a poem.  After he mentioned this about me, a friend of mine then said that I'm more versatile than the elastic of his underwear, at which point I murmured "Thanks" and walked away.  Ewwwwwwwwwww.......

The publication's website, linked in the last word of the first paragraph, said the poem needs "to invoke the spirit of hope."  For those of you who know me, and who are wondering how anyone can construe anything I write as an invocation of hope, I have to say that this one does.  I've thought of the poem as a combination of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," and an old man looking at his burial plot in a snow-covered, wind-swept  cemetery.  Although even the gravestones themselves are covered by a sheet of frozen, crusted snow, he will do his best to survive, anyway, even if he is cognizant of the fact that we'll all have our own resting place someday, and it'll be unknown to the world, and it won't even be visible to anyone during a snowy winter.

Yeah.  Cuz I'm like that.  It is hopeful, though, in its own way.  Trust me.