news-record.com

HIGH POINT — You see it in Katherine Moore's scribblings, the cursive, black ink on napkins, envelopes, and purple and red Post-it notes.

It's the choice phrase, the snippet of conversation. She writes it down and stores it away before the next time at her kitchen table, right after sunrise, when everything is quiet.

She pulls out those scraps of thought and dialogue, and while downing two cups of coffee, she spends about an hour crafting her own poetic lines about life.

Her lines are short, sometimes one word, sometimes funny. But mostly, they are poignant moments that yank your attention. Like when a close friend tells you about her cancer. Those moments strike deep.

We've all been there. But Moore has, too. Before retiring a few months back, she spent 16 years as a grief counselor for the Sechrest Funeral Home in High Point.

She steered individuals and families through some of the most vulnerable moments in their lives, and when she did, she told them to write down their feelings, in a spiral notebook, to get it all out.

"Think about it as a place to put your junky stuff,'' she'd tell them, in her relaxed small-town Virginia drawl.

But Moore didn't follow her own advice. She never kept a journal until January 2006 when she enrolled in a 20-month program for spiritual direction. It was a requirement.

So, at her kitchen table, after her husband Bob went to work, she wrote about something she'd seen or some conversation she'd heard. She filled four black-bound journals.

She wrote about what made a mark on her heart: a weary young mother in an airport, a lunch date with a cancer-stricken friend, a morning at her kitchen table when refracted light danced rainbows on her wall.

She also wrote about her work. As in her poem, "The Quilt.'' It deals with one of her grief sessions when a couple brought in a quilt of their son's old T-shirts for everyone to see.

Their quilt was their own memorial. In May 2003, their son tried to break up a fight at a High Point apartment complex when he was struck in the back of the head with a stick.

He died six days later. He was only 19.

Moore showed her poems to her husband. She also showed them to her longtime friend, Wallace Sills, staff chaplain at High Point Regional Hospital.

"Send me some more of these,'' Sills told her. "People who are hurting can identify with them. You need to write these down.''

Moore did. She transcribed her right-leaning scribbles on the computer, and last fall, she went to a spiritual writers conference in Nashville for guidance. And what she got from the conference? Don't think about getting published unless you're a celebrity.

That didn't stop her. She knew she had something significant she wanted to share with her two grown children and the people she cared about. Still, she couldn't quiet the nagging question in her head: "Am I crazy?''

She wasn't. Today, after spending $1,100, she has self-published her own book of poetry. It's 147 pages long, all divided into sections named wonder, delight, seeking, struggle, sorrow and mystery. The book's title: "Dancing Rainbows.''

"As far as I'm concerned,'' Sills, a Quaker minister, told Moore, "You have received your ordination.''

Moore's poetry is some strong, emotional stuff that tells us a little bit about who we are and how we function.

Yet, flip through her black-bound journals, the first drafts of her early morning creative bursts. You'll see its origins in Post-it notes, frayed notebook pages and scratched-out scribbles.

You'll also see in one journal, right near the front, a four-word phrase that says everything.

"Herein contains my soul.''

Yes, indeed.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jrowe@news-record.com