Within my Shadows, Into my Light by Dr. Melina Martinez
My poetry is about Northern New Mexico, the culture, the food, the sorrow, and joy. The landscape is filled with dreams that life can be real, fulfilled, hard but satisfying. It’s about feeling the dirt generations have worked to scratch a meager living, looking into the eyes of your family and sensing their fear, hope, despair. Nowhere is the music more beautiful, the suffering more tangible, then writing about it in a poem, composing it while running, while hiking. This beauty accompanies one's relentless will to make a life, to make it count by serving others, to make it real with tears and agonizing loneliness, and keep going no matter what others say, listening always to that inner voice. Call it God, Nature or the Universe that keeps whispering that you will prevail, and in one’s struggle for a life you taste and feel beauty on all sides, and it gives the strength to keep going. This is what my poems are about, about a young girl rising early to collect wood, the scent of fragrant cedars, the gorgeous moon beckoning her home, driving pedal to the metal, cranking the music high, being carefree and loving every inch of life and embracing it all, the good, the bad, the hurtful and loving, embracing it all, to proclaim herself worthy of blessings in all forms.
Melina, born in 1974, was raised by her parents with three older brothers, several furry companions, and many farm animals in the arroyos, mountains and streams of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos New Mexico. She is of Hispanic, Greek, Italian and Native American descent tracing her lineage to the seventeen hundreds with the settlers of New Mexico. A mother of 2 brilliant children and wife to her amazing husband and companion of over 32 years. She attended New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and the University of Nevada Las Vegas for her undergraduate studies where she continued to earn her Doctor of Dental Medicine. She is a successful dentist, sole owner, and practitioner to her dental practice in Santa Fe New Mexico where she resides. Dentistry attracted Melina with the opportunity to love and nourish her patients and in return be gifted with an expansion of her world through every one of them and their shared experiences. Melina herself comes from a diverse background, experiencing poverty as well as tremendous fortune and opportunities to grow. Melina, an avid hiker and jogger remains passionate and easily enamored by all forms of nature, art, and especially music and writing. She desires to leave a legacy of truth, love, and beauty aiming to share with the world what it is to be New Mexican through the depths of her gathered experiences as expressed through her poetry.