Gratitude (2013)

I thank you, guardians of my fullest joy,
For teaching me to walk with my destiny,
Protecting and guiding since I was just a boy.
I thank you, guardians of my fullest joy:

I have surely grown old, yet in this man that boy
Will blossom eternal, happy, safe and free.
I thank you, guardians of my fullest joy,
For teaching me to walk with my destiny.

In Memory of Gerald Blacker (2013)

Our lives are spent amid the dark of night:
We cannot see the future or the past,
And even the present’s clarity won’t last
Longer than a breath or a meteor’s flight.

And yet we face the darkness with a light
We find within ourselves – a light as vast
As the universe, and sufficient to outlast
The pain and the anguish, the heartache and the blight.

With what we are given by life we do our best,
And hope along the way that we may meet
A friend or two, with whom we might be blessed
To share that light, in victory and defeat,

To love and be loved, and, as we go to rest,
To say, despite the pain, that life was sweet.

The River (2013)

We dive into the river,
With its waters pure and cold,
To revivify our spirits
And to shed the worn and old.

The river runs forever:
We do not know its source,
We cannot see its ending
And we cannot chart its course –

And yet the river calls us
With an old familiar song:
It sings of our desires
And all for which we long.

It knows us like a mother
Who’s watched us all our days,
Who’s held us in a love embrace
And soothed us with her lays.

We do not know the journey,
Nor the place to which we go,
But if we falter out of fear
Whole worlds we’ll never know.

We’ll never feel our greatest joys,
Nor weep our saddest tears,
And in the end we’ll wonder
At the staleness of the years.

So trust the darkling waters,
And be taken by the swell
Of passion that arises
From a place we cannot tell.

Dive deep into the river,
And take what it would give;
This life was meant for living,
Though we choose how we will live.