Today each read in her own voice

a poem of her choosing,

except for one who let Maya

Angelou read her own verse,

because who would dare to

compete with that voice?

We do this every year and

each year it gets sweeter

and a bit more poignant as

those of us close to or

in our eighties do wonder

how many more times we have.

But we are not old, we are

just rare, treasures, maps

as we learned in one of

today’s poems. We keep those

poems and mark who read them

so that on those

dark, grey days of winter,

we can reach into our

“keep” folders and once more

experience the magic

of those words in

those beautiful voices.