About The Author:
Karen C. Vanderlaan has two great passions in life: kids and horses.
It is her personal mission to help kids in trouble and horses in trouble
and get them all off to a better start in life. She grew up on a dairy
farm in Vermont where she attended a one-room schoolhouse for five
years. She began riding horses almost as soon as she could walk.
She  lives in Utah now where she has raised her three children. And
where she teaches children with emotional disorders and trains
horses. Several of her favorite poems are posted below. Enjoy.
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SHE WANTS TO WEAR A PRETTY DRESS
SATISFACTION
THE MEANING OF LIFE

"She Wants to Wear a Pretty Dress "

She wants to wear a pretty dress again,
She wants to plant flowers in the dirt.
She wants to feel the wet of her newborn foals,
As she gently delivers them into this world.

She wants to dance with her true love again,
With grace and energy to spare.
She wants to grow her hair long again,
And be done with the hats, caps and wigs.

She wants to carry herself with the grace,
Of the Paris model she once was,
She wants to hear birds, smell flowers and see sunsets,
She wants all of this and more.

So she will enter into the hell of this treatment,
On the forty-sixth year to the day of her birth,
Ever grateful that research and other’s stories,
Have enabled her to have a chance to live on.

                                         © by, karen c. vanderlaan

                "Satisfaction"

Every morning I see him, as I turn onto state route 30,
An old wizened farmer of at least sixty-five years,
As he trudges up the hill from the barn,
With a bottle of milk held in his puffy, calloused hand.

And over the crest a little brown calf comes running,
Its tail swinging in the air, she runs straight to this man.
Being an orphan, she leaves the herd for her breakfast,
Pushing and suckling and drooling little milk bubbles.

She’s done within a minute, but hesitates a bit,
The old man rubs the curly hair on the top of her little head,
And then she’s off and running, bounding back to the others,
And the farmer makes his way back to the barn,
With satisfaction in his step.

                                                      © by, karen c. vanderlaan

         "The Meaning of Life"

As youngsters, we start some deep wondering,
The questions asked then linger long into life.
Like, Why is the sky blue? Why can’t I fly?
How much is a million? and  Where does God live?

We anger as teens at anyone who dares,
To presume to know who we are or what we think.
When in reality, if truth be told, we have no idea,
As we desperately search for our own true selves.

Those questions become, when life’s lemonade sours,
And when the sweetness of honeysuckle drifts on the breeze,
Why am I here, what is my purpose,
How do I fit in this grand scheme of living?

And when rainy-day rainbows show themselves grand,
You realize there is no true finality to this quest.
For in living and existing you find what is true,
That the answers are waiting, they are inside of you.

So keep asking the questions,
And continue searching for answers,
For in asking and searching you open the lines,
You will find the answers, for you desire them so.

                                                      © by, karen c. vanderlaan
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The Poetry of Karen C.
Vanderlaan