Welcome. Whoever you are, however you arrived — there was always a chair for you here.
Smilegiving is a body of poems and writings built around one quiet law: what we hand to one another comes looping home. More than thirty poems — some written decades ago, all newly tuned — gather into a single ongoing conversation about love, giving, and the near and forgiving light already within us.
Born from music, memory, spiritual hunger, humor, and ordinary wonder, the poems move from the doorway inward — through the honest dark, into a widening, toward a quiet center, and finally back out into the world, toward you, and toward the next face you meet. You don’t have to be a “poetry person.” You don’t have to have liked it in school. These were written to make you feel found. Begin wherever you feel drawn or follow the collection’s deliberate journey. Whatever light you find here is yours to carry onward.
So turn to the next face. Smile first. Say yes.