 |
The poet’s experiences and ideals come to life in this engaging collection. Her messages, some of them Christian themed, are embedded in verse that may rhyme without being locked into a standard stanza format, as in this line from “Hard at Work and Happy!”: “The Lord opened another door, bigger, better and made me wiser than before.”
Some poems hint of loss and rebirth, recalling calamities that brought her back to a peaceful place. An example of this is seen in “Some Rain Must Fall,” which reflects on the day she got soaked in a downpour of rain, opening her eyes to her “deepest pain.” Climbing her personal mountain, she looks back in “High on a Mountain” on times of hurt and ahead to the love of Jesus Christ. In “Punished,” she speaks frankly of her therapist, who, by inflicting mental pain, gave her a vision of the future when she would recover from an injury to her hand and regain the ability to write.
Smart reveals a lifelong wish to create poetry, and now, in her work as a caregiver, she shares her thoughts with many others. Her compositions demonstrate genuine fervor for her religion while also drawing on elements of the natural world; trees, seasons, rainbows, and a lovely flower all play a role in her musings. In a clever observation of traditional Christmas celebrations, she wonders why we have fantasized “St. Nick on a sleigh” when we have the opportunity to commemorate the memory of the birth of Christ. Several of her creations are memorials to friends or family and to friendship generally. It is easy to imagine her simple but pensive poems giving a sense of hope and happiness to those needing solace.