<p style='margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Book Antiqua";'>Welcome to <em>A Mixed Bag</em>, an eclectic assortment of poems inspired through the experience of living an ordinary life, a mixture of tears and sorrow . . . joys and laughter.&nbsp;</p><p style='margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Book Antiqua";'>The poems collected here, born from my mother's passing, reflect the fact life is both a mixture of happy and sad moments.&nbsp;</p><p style='margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Book Antiqua";'>By writing about the beautiful and whimsical, and those experiences which may bring about tears and sadness, I offer others a piece of hope, a vision of sunshine on the horizon of a new day.&nbsp;</p><p style='margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Book Antiqua";'>We may experience pain, but alongside pain walk gifts found in the beauty of nature and in the giving of others to help us through this journey called life.</p>