"Taste How Good Life Can Be"

This is a poem my mother-in-law wrote in 1999.  I turned my house and our lives upside down looking for it as she was dying of brain cancer--no luck. A year later, one of her dear friends found a copy, had it beautifully framed and mailed it to us. It was a poem for a contest for Sunsweet Prunes, and the prize was $15,000, which would have paid for the achievement of her dream to play a golden flute in solo concert at Carnegie Hall. She did not win the contest, but she achieved her goal anyway. 

Today, the second anniversary of her trip to the other side, I am posting it here as it captures the whimsy, ambition, monstrous talent and joie de vivre that embodied Cheryl:

Taste How Good Life Can Be

Before me on the tree of Life there Suns a Plum  (quite Sweet)

  a New York debut (flute of gold) with Zest I Prune -- replete.

  How Good 'twould Taste--the Essence bold--Choose me! I've Dreamed this feat.

Grand moment Prized: (I'd croon -- Complete.) it's Savoury... Tangy... Fleet...

Embracing Aspirations ripe and Pitted -  scarred by blight,

I reach for this Experience.  Dare wish... could Be.... (how Right?)

my pipedream old (play Carnegie) the girl I was  Excites

Achieve this goal?  O!  heart's delight -- such fancy you invite.

Now 45, (surviving) how I thrive thanks to the 'fife'

I play and teach - give air to thought - I'm also mom and wife.

No matter that my Circle's closed (with cancer comes great strife)

Select me.  Stage my solo turn.  no Contest - I sing rife.

Imagining... begging time and place  (my Spirit writhes)  come round,

please join me - help me celebrate - skip not the beat I've found

the secret: working hand in hand  - we resonate - abound.

I ask support,  (pray Musically)

  Fund Magic....

I'll spin Sound.

Cheryl Feyrer Gobbetti-Hoffman (Oct 6, 1954-Aug 1, 2008)