Within my Shadows, Into my Light - Paperback

by Melina Lujan Martinez (Author), James Drake (Artist), Lonnie Anderson (Photographer)

My poetry is about Northern New Mexico, the culture, the food, the sorrow, and joy. The landscape is filled with dreams that life can be real, fulfilled, hard but satisfying. It's about feeling the dirt generations have worked to scratch a meager living, looking into the eyes of your family and sensing their fear, hope, despair. Nowhere is the music more beautiful, the suffering more tangible, then writing about it in a poem, composing it while running, while hiking. This beauty accompanies one's relentless will to make a life, to make it count by serving others, to make it real with tears and agonizing loneliness, and keep going no matter what others say, listening always to that inner voice. Call it God, Nature or the Universe that keeps whispering that you will prevail, and in one's struggle for a life you taste and feel beauty on all sides, and it gives the strength to keep going. This is what my poems are about, about a young girl rising early to collect wood, the scent of fragrant cedars, the gorgeous moon beckoning her home, driving pedal to the metal, cranking the music high, being carefree and loving every inch of life and embracing it all, the good, the bad, the hurtful and loving, embracing it all, to proclaim herself worthy of blessings in all forms.