This is my day.

Today is the day I’ve waited for all my life. My personal copies of This Pagan Heaven were on the doorstep this morning. And there was much rejoicing.

I’ve published so many things over the past, what?–25 years?–that I can’t even count them all. Just in the poetry universe, even with my very late start in the 90s, I’ve worked my way up slowly, the way most folks do: college litmags, regular litmags, a self-published chapbook, a few small-press anthologies. But I never anticipated how it would feel to hold my own book, from a real publisher, in my hands, at the ripe old age of 45.

Happy. Full of light. Hands trembling with excitement.

And then the requisite hugs and kisses and signings to family and Chinese food and celebratory wine tipsiness and the congratulations from friends near and far and the pictures and the grinning from ear to ear.

I know the real work comes now, the selling, the reading, the webpage-tweaking, the traveling in between the usual dirty socks and paper-grading.

But today, I am an author. I am a “real” poet. And I am happy beyond measure.

Gentle reader, I wish for you this much joy.