Community

I was introduced to the poet by a contributor to the Amazon sellers' board. Which can now be my justification for trawling it several times a day.

Whilst I was ill I had another sad but enriching experience of this strange etheric brotherhood of booksellers. A lady called Dorothy Millns died. Her son posted the news very early one morning, just a few hours after she had passed; by mid morning the responses were flooding in from folk who, like me, had learned to love Dorothy. I had come to 'know' her through her posts over the years as a warm, witty and wise woman, who would go the extra mile to help a newbie. I wept. And others wept. And several wondered at the strangeness of this world where we now weep tears of loss at the death of a stranger who has become a dear personal friend to a community of people without there ever being any physical meetings. Her posts often ended with words like: 'Now I'm going to take my oxygen bottle to bed.' I was never sure if she was joking because there was so little self-pity in her comments. When I realised she suffered from emphysemia the compassion and understanding that she showed toward the motley rout who come and go on the boards, often not in the best of moods often behaving like fractious children, sometimes not the most rational or nicest of folk, was all the more impressive. It's quite hard to keep a sense of perspective when lacking oxygen in my experience.

There'll probably be another word- fight brewing on the boards in a short time, over religion, or alternative medicine or politics or - the inability of some folk to use proper punctuation. Names will be called, harsh words spoken, slurs and slights thrown, but through it all I shall see Dorothy grinning at us amongst the webs of waves and particles that connect us.