Will You?

Will you sing my song
when I am gone?
Tell the tales that
speak of me?

Will you take up
lute and lyre,
And of all my life
be the choir?

I pray thee will
tell all of me,
Of what I loved
and what I be.

No one knows the
man I am,
Quite as well
as you, my friend.

Yes, my friend,
my wife, my love, my own;
Speak well of me
until you come.

And 'til you come
to rest close as my own;
I'll speak well
of you to God's dear son.

Loving Life

I love life.
I thank you, my God,
For choosing this life for me!

I love the trees,
the sky that covers all;
The world you made so lovingly.

Thank you, God.
from me

On Looking at a Picture of Box 362

Our mailbox stood on its wooden legs
under the dogwood tree;
Waiting for the mailman
to open its door,
With a letter of love
for me.

The daffodils sang
down beside the edge,
As the fat buzzy bees
drilled their homey holes
In the old gray porch on
the front of Gram's house,
When I lived down Woodwardville way.

The branch gurgled gayly
neath the walls of red clay,
Past the shuttle wheel
Pop Pop had crafted by hand.
His shed and the single engine
he built pulled the branch
Up the hill by the side of the road
to his thirsty field,
near our brown-shingled house.

We kids ventured out
after oatmeal and chocolate chips;
Disappearing til called for L U N C H.
That branch was our turf,
Our ocean, our sea,
Our jungle, and playhouse, and sky.

There were no rules, no parents,
no one to ask, "Why?"
It was OUR world,
And we were SO free.

My Answer to T. A. Heppenheimer's "FIRST WORD" in OMNI Magazine

You did not take your cloning theory far enough.  You stopped while your arguments supported your theories.  However, for the sake of clarity, you did not proceed on into darkness.

Let's not stop with Kennedy and Roosevelt, let's give the other side a chance.  How nice it would have been for Hitler's friends and supporters to be able to bring his clone to life to lead yet another million Jews to their graves two decades into the "new" centruy.

Or, if you prefer to "control" such happenings, such unplanned "creations," we will need to be foresighted enough to establish a board that can rule which clones are worthy of being "born" and which are better left quick-frozen forever, like Hitler's.

Oh, and we can forget costly research into more starwars programs; we won't need them.  We can accomplish the same results at a much lower cost if we are willing to wait 20 years for an elite cloned army to rise up from the cells of our top fighters.  This army could annihilate all the malnourished, third world nations and leave the world for people (intellectuals mostly wouln't you think?) and their "more worthy" clones to enjoy.

We should inject a small amount of reality at this point to ponder for a moment a worthwhile theory:  Heredity, Environment or Will...which makes the man?  (That was a question my grandmother had to write a paper on many years ago.   Wish I could find it.)

Go back to your example of the young woman who decides she is such a worthwhile addition to humanity, and being a product of the "self" generation decides, needing no one - a husband, nor a significant lover, that she will just bring her clone to life.  Of course, that clone's life will dovetail with hers exactly because the clone will be her.  But......will it?

The clone will be raised by her not her mother, not her father (who hopefully, were two divergent personalities).  The clone will attend different schools, have different playmates, different experiences.  The clone will be buffeted by a different environment, so it is probable that different parts of the clone's personality will be highlighted than those of the woman as she grew.  So it is entirely conceivable that the woman will not end up with another self but an other self.  And just maybe, the woman won't like having to share her "self" with others.

Identical twins may be identical, clones may be identical - replicas, duplicates...but, can we be so very sure that the soul, the will is identical?  As happened at the Tower of Babel, maybe an entity higher than ourselves, realized at one point long ago that sameness in not necessarily wonderful.  Maybe at that point, He decided we had more to offer each other in our diversity than in our sameness.  Maybe He decided at creation, rather than spit us out like so many carbon copies that He would give us each a little stardust of His likeness to develop into myriads of Himself much like snowflakes or the raindrops in the sun creating a rainbow.

Who Are You?

Who are you when no one is around?
Are there dreams you've been having all your life
that have yet to become real?

Will anyone ever know the real you?
Do you want them to, or are you afraid
the essence of you will burst
like the bubbles you blew on a summer's day
many suns ago?

But if YOU don't bring them out in the open
will the dreams ever become real,
last,
multiply,
ripple through others' lives?

Your ripple may be just what is needed
to put the sparkle in someone else's dream.

Premise: Often times procrastination appears to be the advantageous road to take to reach our goals; however, the steady, plodding turtles of organization and promptness win more subtle victories.

1. Procrastination while giving us more free time at the moment, robs us of valuable time in the future.  For instance, putting off one's homework on Saturday for a day filled with fun and sunshine and an evening of wine and dancing may find us Sunday in the wee hours of the morning struggling with bleary eyes for one more line of deathless prose.
2. If we instead, cultivate a plan to organize our time, we will find that we actually have more time.  Time to do the very things which caused us to procrastinate.  By organizing our workload into small bits we can chew away at large jobs in palatable bites and still achieve our goals.
3. The victories to be won are threefold:  We triumph over time and control it rather than letting it control us.  We triumph over medeocrity by allowing ourselves time to do our best.  And, we triumph over self-defeatedness by showing to ourselves that we CAN accomplish what we set out to do!

Betsy's Best

I walked into the auction hall,
bound and determined to spend my all.
The church's welfare is a good cause for me,
so I was ready and able to answer their plea.

The room was gorgeous, tons of bounty,
at St. Benedict Church in Caroline County.
It was much like Christmas with presents unwrapped,
so many tables, I needed some maps!

When, hark, I spotted it, gleaming red,
and, lo' and behold, it was just ahead;
an item so wonderful, enticing and bright,
I knew my bid for it must be just right.

I could have made it, and baked it, and ate it;
I could have and should have, but wait just a  minute--
If I had it would not have been as great,
as the item I saw, I couldn't wait!

Thank God for Betsy and her baking prowess.
I'm here to attest; I'm here to witness,
that her strawberry pie is truly THE BEST;
my palate and our Parish have truly been blessed!

I Believe

I believe all our trials and tribulations are just our labor pains
as we strive to be born into Eternal Life! 6/17/1974