You can’t have a finish line without a start line. ~ Marty Torsey

One of these days I’ll write those books,
the ones about women judges
that grew from a proposal to a publisher
twenty years ago. Maybe this year.
I’ve got them named. The series?
She Who Must Be Obeyed.
The three books? Texas Women’s
Legal History Before It Began.
On the Record (the “courts of record,”
kind of beginning with Sarah T. Hughes
in 1935. The third? The Wild Women.
Boy, the stories I can tell about them.
Oh, but I just know the titles.
Drafts of the books are at least ten years old.
But I might publish this year. If I get started,
and of course, if I get finished.

All my life I’ve had plans. To stop procrastinating,
to write whatever book comes to mind,
to lose the weight, to organize the house,
to strip the fourth piece of the set I refinished
twenty years ago. I can dream, can’t I?

Lord, I want to be a Christian, in-a my heart,
in-a my heart. I would love to reach
a healthy body weight. Someday I will.
I’ve got a bad case of the want to’s.
But first, I guess I should start something
I want to finish.