a tender force is a volume of 100 powerful and moving poems by melissa joseph covering topics of tenderness, suffering, connection, sensuality, doubt, disconnection, sensibility, insight, becoming, darkness, infatuation and ordinary things. "Each poem in this collection is an exquisite and well-crafted facet of life. There is much wisdom to be found here."---Sharon Salzburg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness when my poetry comes to me, I go to a place where nothing else exists, just that sweet moment when the words, like a stream of water, flow, until the sensory valve automatically, with it's self-timer, shuts off. I cannot go back and turn it on. it must happen again expressly. I don't have to wait for that moment. I know it will come again and again. "Each poem in this collection is an exquisite and well crafted facet of life. They reveal moments of clarity and mindfulness, insight into encounters with hard truths, disappointments, happiness, yearnings of the heart, tender and sometimes fleeting moments of love and connection, death and more. There is much wisdom to be found here." - Sharon Salzberg , author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness love not a feelingnor a thoughta tender forceof the heart melissa has been an entrepreneur, director of an ESL program, English teacher at community colleges, and volunteered at a local hospital and hospice. in addition to A Tender Force, she's the author of Moments with Baxter. she lives in Del Mar, California, with her therapy dog, Lotus.