Someone to Love, Someone Like You

Foreword

“Terry has a gift for wonder and gratitude. He reminds us that poetry is on the side of life. He lives in a physical and colloquial world with disarming simplicity. Instead of sentimentality, cliché, and pretension you will find creative imagination, incisive reflection, gentle humor. These are poems of wisdom, about a life lived in the body and in nature; about faith, hope, and love; about time, suffering, and death. . . . These poems constitute a spiritual journal. They are not abstractions. They are to be treated with tenderness.”

John Honner

“This lovely, vivid book intersperses short meditative essays with flights of terse and piercing poetry. Together they explore the wonder and the waste of life, creative work and unproductive labor, the mystery of death and the vulnerability of flesh. And always, always, the love of God. This is a love responded to in passion, pain, prayer—as well as through the rigorous, spiritual discipline of poetic construction. To read Veling’s poems is to walk beside someone who is both vulnerable and wise. By sharing his life experience, you gain some of the clarity needed to critique the form of your own life as well as to marvel at the love his poetry manifests.”

Heather Walton

“With words of gratitude, Veling’s prose and poetry illuminate. Acknowledging our finitude, they call us to attend to creation’s wonders and alert us to the presence of the divine. They invite us into relationship—with each other, the natural world, and God’s love.”

Thomas F. Ryan