I had a lovely talk on a sun-drenched bench in Central Park with a dear friend this afternoon. Our discussion eventually came to thejourney it takes to find one's own voice and nurture it despite theobstacles - more often inner than outer !

So I smiled when I saw that the poem Maria Shriver chose to read for the Women's conference in celebration of Poetry Month: The Journey by Mary Oliver. The author received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 and still today in her 80's, continues to write.

This beautiful poem could have not more appropriately described our delightful afternoon conversation.
Ce poeme est pour toi, ma cherie!

One of my favorite ones is Indian Summer by Dorothy Parker.... What's yours?

The video is on http://www.sheisfrench.com/afternoon-delight/art/

The Journey by Mary Oliver.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.