Have a Dalai Lama Christmas
Party like a Buddhist with me
I don't know if we'll be reborn
So have some butter tea!
Have a Dalai Lama Christmas
And when you walk down the street
Say namasate to friends you know
And everyone you meet
Oh, Ho the dorje
Held for all to see
Monks chant, Mani Padre Om
Meditate along with me
Have a Dalai Lama Christmas,
Keep your karma clear
And Oh by golly, lets have a Dalai Lama
Christmas this year.
Shoreline's rising tide;
seaweed upon the strand,
staining black the rocks
between ebb and neap.
Boats lie moored here alee,
some floating; others weighing
at anchor; buoyed
by transverse waves,
whose sonance now
reaches my ears.
Who knew, the moons
subtle hand had pulled,
not only upon the gathering sea, ( oceans net )
but lifted all the ships too,
so that one, alone,
slipped its reigns;
ironically freed
by gravities' wake?
Ignorant were we,
racing in the spray
and swimming out
to those crafts there,
as our end.
We knew not,
that the knots had frayed
and that we, like it,
were adrift in the bosom
of the boundless sea.
Getting no closer,
yet further away
from home, we move in
an imperfect asymptote.
Unaware that our aim
too is loose, as we both
drift heedlessly
toward that place
where sea and sky
meet as one.
Sport is "thru-hiking" the Appalachian Trail, a trail that runs over 2100 miles from Mt. Katadhin in Maine to Springer Mountain, Georgia. Thru-hikers are people that hike the entire thing in one go, typically taking up to 6 months to complete their journey. Each year approximately 1,500 people attempt this same challenge, though only a fraction makes it all the way. However, Sport is not a person; Sport is a dog, in the company of his people Tyler and Sonya.
The trio began their hike on May 20th at Katahdin and have steadily been working their way south ever since. Hiking on average 15 to 20 miles a day, Sport is a good sport. He carries his own pack and undergoes all of the same adversities as Sonya and Tyler; climbing mountains, fording streams and sleeping under the stars.
An undertaking of this type is not taken lightly, much planning and training is necessary to complete the sojourn. Sport too had to be ready. Before beginning their hike Sonya and Tyler took Sport out on a number of practice hikes. They also sought out the advice of dog experts, such as Lynn Whittaker, Owner of Bowwow University; a dog training studio in Litchfield, CT.
Sonya and Tyler wanted to make sure that Sport was up to the challenge in regard to his training, both physically and mentally. This meant obedience training, basically doggy-boot camp, for Sport. Since Sport would be meeting other people along the trail, it was important that Sport had the basics, such as come, sit and stay, mastered, especially since he might be sharing sleeping quarters with strangers and would often be off leash.
As Sport was going to be working hard and his weight-load at a premium, it was also important that Sonya and Tyler consider the proper nutrition for Sport. As he would be doing a lot more work than the today's average couch potato pup, finding the proper diet was a must. Furthermore, there were other considerations, including ticks and such which can plague both human and canine alike. Lynn Whittaker was able to help in these areas too, offering guidance and advice for Sport.
Sport, through Sonya who is equipped with an I-Phone, has been keeping his friends and family in Connecticut up to speed on his adventures. Back home in Litchfield, Lynn and the folks at Bowwow U follow Sonya, Tyler and Sport's progress; tracking their movement on a wall map. Lynn continues to provide advice and moral support too as the group checks in via email, photos and the occasional call.
In a few weeks, the three will be making their way through the 51 miles of the trail that weaves through Connecticut. Lynn plans on meeting up with them to help resupply Sport as he continues to make his way south. More updates on their progress to come.
One day I will return
to my quantum state;
neither here, nor there.
A complex wave.
Contours of constant probability,
defying prediction
of such conjugate variables.
Am I matter?
Am I spirit?
When my body is at rest
where is my energy?
It will have been
translated into this closed system
and become what I have done;
having changed this plane
even if only in the most
subtle of ways.
It goes on and on
even after my cause
has long been forgotten.
When my spirit
is thus quantifiable,
having irradiated away
and given off
its valance,
then you will know
all that I am
all that I was
and all I will ever be…
and I will be gone
having crashed upon the beach
and returned to the sea.
In America most businesses are either manufacturing-retail, they make and/or sell something, or service oriented, they do things for you, like companies that mow your lawn for instance. Even governmental functions can be so organized, for example the government can either build a road ( manufacturing ) or audit your taxes ( service ) Among the service businesses are a particularly pernicious group which I call "systemic" organizations.
In a manufacturing or retail establishment there is a product and a process with a definitive beginning and end; usually the "end" is when the product is made and/or sold. The buyer then pays. In system oriented business the focus is not on an end result, but on the process, because there is no product. You are the product and the business gets paid along the way by servicing you. Thus many of the activities engaged in by these system oriented organizations are designed to keep you in the system because without you, the product, the business ceases to have an income and ceases to be; if you move on out of the system, no more income for the business enterprise.
Examples of system oriented businesses are hospitals, courts and insurance companies. Have you ever noticed that if you go to the Doctor they always find some other test or other thing that you have going wrong? Get a blood test and the Dr is likely to say your "levels are elevated". What the heck does that mean? Insurance companies are set up to take money from you, they make it so easy you can even pay on line, or have the money directly taken from your account. But file a claim! Then you find that the insurance company didn't get your check, didn't send the right form or lost what you sent them.
Bureaucracies are especially effective at this charade and DMV is probably the best example. You almost always have to go back to DMV two, three or even more times. You never have the right form or it wasn't signed by the right person in the right spot. And ask yourself, what does DMV do for you? It's nothing more than a glorified way of collecting taxes. They don't make it easy for you to get what you need taken care of, like they should, no, in fact they make it more complicated. Even when you have done nothing wrong you feel guilty. You walk on egg shells. You don't want to get in trouble with the "man".
Once entrapped in such a system it can sometimes be nearly impossible to extricate yourself. The judicial system is the best example here. Get into trouble with the law, even for a minor infraction, and you can expect months of going to court, paying bills etc. If you get into deep enough trouble you may go to jail, be on probation or parole. In this way you are almost guaranteed to be in the system for years! Job security for some cretin with a brow-ridge and anger issues.
"Oh", you may say, "you can avoid these systems by staying on the straight and narrow path. Just don't get into trouble". Ah, but the system makers have thought of this. They create so many rules and make things so confusing that it is easy to fall into their trap and then WHAMO, your in their system. Look at how many rules there are in our society. You can't do this, and you can't do that. When there are too many laws, then everyone is a potential criminal. It used to be that the lawmakers in Washington were part time politicians with full time jobs elsewhere, not anymore. They sit all day in their plush offices with their leather chairs creating more and more systems. This is why simple forms no longer have names, they now have numbers instead, things like W2, the 1040, the I-9; guaranteed to confuse.
This too explains why the government is against abortion or personal recreational drug use, because we don't want to make things easy on people do we? Heaven forbid that people actually use their brain to make decisions for themselves. We want to control what people do and what people say. We want them to be in the system. It's much like the movie the Matrix. In the movie machines live off the life energy given off by humans. In the real world systems do the same thing. Or to quote another movie, "I keep getting out, but they keep pulling me back in again".
Most people have 6th grade level educations. I have a master's degree and can barely figure out how all these systems work, never mind an 80 years old addle pated grandmother for whom English is a second language. That's why America imprisons more people than any other country in the world! Land of the free? Ha, we put more people in prison than the USSR ever did. Nothing is free in this country. It's the land of the expensive because those systems need to be fed, especially the judicial system. The one system that is supposed to protect our rights is the one that most imprisons us, but only if your poor. If you have money you can hire lawyers and attempt to get justice, look at OJ, look at all the Wallstreet scumbags. If your poor, recourse to the law is yet one more thing denied you: "With liberty and justice for those who can afford it".
Now that you are aware of this, pay attention, you will be surprised how many of these systems there are. Stand up to the systems! Otherwise….,
Plug in, turn off and shut up.
It seems hard to believe that it has been nearly seven years ago now since I first was introduced to Geocaching. And it was O. Rex who first turned me on to it. I had a GPSr, but we were using PDAs back then, Handsprings with a GPS attachment. I had one ( a gift ), but wasn't really sure how it worked. I was only dimly aware of this thing called Geocaching. Fast forward, and here we are marking significant milestones ( just passed # 300! ). While some people do in a month what we do in a year ( or four ), for me, it is not the quantity, but the quality. When I first started doing this, we were coming down off of some pretty big trips hiking out west. I ( we ) had some heady plans to see the world ( trekking in Nepal and hiking Patagonia ), but they were not to be. Health issues and life in general denied us these opportunities (so far). Geocaching became a new passion. A replacement for what we wanted to do, but could not. It allowed us to condense into a few hours some of the experiences it might take a week to do. It gave us something to do during the day; to plot and plan mini-trips that could be distilled into an evening or a Sunday. It helped define us and added meaning to what otherwise might have been just another day, or week, or year. Simple trips to the store became adventures and every foray to somewhere new became an excuse to geocache. Today, we have each cached in other states. We have even cached in another countries. We have cached in the summer, and the cold, in the rain and in the sun, day, night, we have even tied caching into camping trips and in our day to day work world. Heck, I have even cached with my mother. I rarely go anywhere without checking to see if there is a cache I can do along the way. While one of the best parts was discovering cool new places in my own state where I hadn't been, the best part was hanging around with my good friends and Rex in particular. You couldn't ask for a better caching partner. He has always been willing to do the crazy things few others would, canoeing in the rain, visiting cemeteries late at night, caching cold winter evenings, with Rex putting Christmas lights on his backpack. I, and I think we, have 100+ great memories because of geocaching we wouldn't have had. This is why I love geocaching. Thanks for the Cache
An early April peeper sings
out its lonesome, solo song.
One voice against the gathering night
that goes on and on and on.
I am here, I am here, I am here
it says, announcing that it is
and all that matters is to be
alive on a night like this.
As a management instructor and consultant, I have periodically heard managers bemoan their lack of "control" in various settings. My typical response to that remark is that control is an illusion; there is really no such thing. At best, all we can hope to achieve is influence. I came to this conclusion, an epiphany really, several years ago during a white water rafting trip.
My buddies and I got stuck in a fairly aggressive section of river. There were rocks and white water waves everywhere. Fearing our immediate capsizing, we paddled like mad to keep our line in the river. The boat was heaving like a bucking bronco and many of my compatriots were holding on for dear life. Despite our frantic exertions, our efforts seemed to have little effect. After awhile we were unable to maintain our furious paddling pace and one by one my friends quite paddling at all. With each person who quit I noticed that our heaving was subsiding, though the river was no less riled. We were still rocking around quite a bit, but the ride was much smoother and significantly so.
As an experiment, I asked my friends to again put their back into their oars and paddle vigorously. They complied ( reluctantly, I think ) and again we were soon being shaken about. When we ceased paddling, again, our lot was much better in terms of our comfort. In fact, we found that we did not have to hold on as tightly as we had been.
I learned a lot from that experience. While I thought I was controlling the situation, my efforts were actually making matters worse. There was no way I was going to control the river, its size and strength were far beyond mine. But I did not have to control it. Like playing a musical instrument, it is important to know when and how to apply force, too much and you confuse the situation, too little and you lose any influence you truly do have. Rather than paddling crazily, it's better to apply small actions at the right time. Managing organizations and people is no different.
I don't know about you, but for the past two weeks, I have been glued to my TV each night watching the Winter Olympics. The Olympics are truly a spectacle and rich in the human drama of competition, triumph and defeat. It is an opportunity for me, and I am sure millions of Americans like me, to see (and care about), sports they don't normally get to; such as curling and tandem luge.
However, as I tend to have a warped sense of humor, as I watched the games unfold, I could not help but think about different events that are not currently part of the Olympic regimen and different takes on sports that are. Here is a list of things I have thought about in my sick mind over these past two weeks.
I would like to see an Afghanistan Women's Olympic Ice Hockey team. Can you just see them skating around the rink in their burkas ululating as they do?
Full contact group figure skating. No more of this sissy stuff of people doing jumps and spins all alone on the ice. I think everyone should be on the ice at the same time showing their stuff. Points are earned for artistry, technical merit and evasion of bodily harm. Wait, maybe that's hockey?!
Naked luge. This would certainly spice up a sport that, while exciting, is otherwise dampened by the fact that the winner usually wins by only fractions of a second. Now people will care a lot less about the time. ( interesting visuals, heh? ).
Bazooka biathlon. While this sport is interesting from the standpoint that it involves skiing and guns, a clearly winning combination, I want to see some real firepower. This would also have the effect of making the skiing part of the game, the dull part, much more challenging.
I think we can even combine sports from different events, like skating and basketball, or short track speed skating for the visually impaired. The various combinations are almost limitless; how about curling and freestyle swimming or cycling and downhill mougles?
All in all, the Olympics are truly an example of humankind at its best, but maybe that's the problem for me. Like people who go to the races to see the crashes, I am one of those who get entertainment out of watching people doing stupid things, like driving fast around in circles ( nascar anyone? ) and then interjecting the unlikely, the unexpected and even the absurd. On this note, whatever happened to Rollerball? Now there is a sport I can really get into! Maybe, if it was played on ice…..?
With everyone being more considerate of the environment and the term "green" showing up everywhere these days, I figured it wouldn't be long before some folks began to think about how to make the war on terror more "green friendly", so I thought that I would weigh in on the subject first. Here is my plan.
Everyone knows wars are awful and that the killing of innocent civilians is a tragic consequence, but that's because heretofore wars have been fought with weapons. On the other hand, we here in the US have a burgeoning problem with garbage, its pilling up in the cities and fouling the countryside, thus, I believe we need to fight the war with garbage. This way we kill 2 birds with one stone, er, so to speak ( sorry Peta people ).
Since we are flying over terrorist infested lands anyway, we fill up the planes with trash and dump it out along the way. This is less likely to kill people, but at the same time I believe it would have a tremendously demoralizing effect upon the enemy, especially if the trash was full of shoes and dead pig products which we know are historic anathema of the radical Islamic practitioner.
It wouldn't be too long before the streets of Terrorland were full of old newspapers, rotting banana peels, and discarded electronic equipment. Some might argue that this is just moving the trash problem from one place to another, but I say, have you seen these places? If there exists a better place to create a landfill, I have yet to find it. We can also do them the favor, since they believe we are simply after their oil, by sending the oil we are all done with back to them. Let them figure out a way to recycle it.
I believe my plan could end this war on terror in a matter of weeks, maybe less, then we could finally focus on the real important matters, like what Brittany Spears is up to these days. I am afraid she has had to take a back seat to all this war hoopla.
You just don't ever expect to come home and find a voodoo offering not far you're your own front door! But that's exactly what happened to me 5 years ago.
I had just returned home from work, when my neighbor, Dan, approached me and asked me if I had seen anything unusual in the neighborhood that day. I had been at work since the early morning, so I replied that I hadn't. My curiosity piqued, I asked him, why? He said, "You have got to see this", in a tone that he only reserved for the most unusual of situations like when he got his car stuck in his backyard, hauling wood as if it were a dump truck. I could tell he was excited.
He then had me follow him a few hundred feet down the road. He and I live on a cul-de-sac, in a fairly typical suburban development. Dan's house is the last before the end of the pavement. While the pavement ends there is a dirt road, not much more than a trail really, that continues from there a few hundred feet further into the woods. Just where the pavement ends and the dirt trail begins, was one of the most unusual things I had ever seen in my life.
The first things I noticed were two goats' heads sticking out from under a black cloth of some sort. The cloth had been folded over into a triangular shape. It appeared to have been blown back or folded back to reveal the goat's heads. On top of the material was a bunch of grass. I was so shocked and amazed that I could barely take it all in. It was something out of a bad TV movie. In addition to the goat's heads, there was some sort of symbol, like a pentagram, drawn on the pavement in chalk. There was also an opened small, "nipper", bottle of rum, half full, and a cigar partially burnt, resting on a rock. These items were obviously strategically, even carefully, placed there. I was speechless.
When I was able to something else other than "what the!?", I asked Dan if he had called the police. He said that he hadn't, that he had only just discovered it himself, a few minutes before. He said that his five year old daughter had been playing in the front yard and she had spotted the…the whatever it was. She reported to her father that she had found a "teddy bear" in the road.
Dan got on his cell phone to call the police. As he did so, I took a closer look at the situation. I carefully lifted up the black material with the tip of a pen. Underneath, I could see that there were several coconuts. This just got stranger and stranger. The material that covered the spectacle had a pattern imprinted in it; spider webs, like something from a Halloween decoration.
While Dan talked with the police, I ran to get my camera. When I returned Dan was just staring down at what I could only describe as a ritual offering. Since we had nothing left to do but wait for the police, I was able to look at the objects more closely. I noticed that one of the goat's heads was white and the other was black. One was facing north and the other facing south. They appeared to have been kids, young goats.
The cigar was to the east and the bottle of rum to the west. Obviously there was a lot of symbolism here. Clearly whoever did this knew what they were doing. This was too carefully laid out to be the neighborhood kids fooling around.
I spent quite a while looking at the pentagram. It was a circle with dissecting lines. I had seen various occult symbols before, having been interested in the subject as a teenager, but had never seen anything like this. It appeared to have been drawn with chalk, but what looked like a fragment of the material left to draw the symbol had been left behind, and it appeared to be a shell of some kind. As opposed to the arrangement with the goat's heads, which was precisely laid out with care, the symbol appeared to have been hastily drawn.
The police soon came and they kept on coming. In short order there were half a dozen police cars and nearly a dozen cops from different departments and jurisdictions including the state police. The news spread fast I guess. They began to investigate the "crime scene". One officer went off down the trail to see if there was anything unusual there, while the officer in charge carefully lifted up the black material.
Underneath, there were nine coconuts, arranged in a triangle. The goat's heads sat in the middle, carefully propped up. Each coconut had been drilled out and each cut with bisecting lines forming the sign of the cross. The coconuts in the corners had been painted; red on one side and black on the other. One of the coconuts had been cut deep and some sort of sand or dirt was spilling out of it. I later learned that this was probably cemetery dirt.
One of the officers commented, "looks like the work of kids". He then looked down to notice that he was standing on the pentagram; so much for a careful examination of the scene. As he stepped back, he looked at the pentagram as if seeing it for the first time and said "devil worship." I said, 'I don think it's either kids, or devil worship. It looks like, well, like voodoo."
The officer in charge began to disassemble the array, joking as he did. He held up one of the goat's heads by its tiny little horn and said to his colleague nearby, "hey, I got your lunch here". They were clearly amused about the whole thing and it was obviously a highlight of their day, if not their year or even their career.
There were two plain clothes detectives in the group. They seemed somewhat impatient with the banter of their uniformed colleagues and they stepped forward to investigate in earnest. One detective was looking intently at one of the goats. He pulled out his notebook and noted that each goats head had an ear tag with some sort of identifying number. He remarked that he was hopeful that they might be able to get some information from that.
In turn he picked up each item and put in into an evidence bag with the others. I felt a little sad when there was nothing left but the pentagram, because the arrangement was so unusual, that I felt that there was more we could have gleaned from it; more than what met the eye.
The policeman who went into the woods returned empty handed. All the police then left, all but the two detectives, who stayed to question Dan and me. As we were wrapping things up, a truck pulled up bearing the logo of a local television station. I thought to myself, "Jeez, here we go", this could begin to get out of control. Visions of paparazzi storming my quiet neighborhood filled me with dread. Two guys got out of the truck. You could tell that one was the cameraman, dressed in T-shirt and jeans, and the other guy was the "talent" dressed in suit and tie, but with the tie loosely fastened.
The reporter tried unsuccessfully to question the detectives who were clearly used to this sort of thing and who adroitly turned aside the questioning. Dan on the other hand was eager to talk and was soon getting into painstaking detail about the discovery. Having been misrepresented by the media before and shy about a repeat performance, I had no interest in being interviewed on camera and I quietly slipped away.
You just don't quickly forget something such as this and I was eager to look up information on the internet. In a search engine, I used all the elements of the offering, goats' heads', coconuts, cigar, etc, as key words. After sifting through several hours of information, I concluded that the offering was probably Santeria; a type of voodoo.
Santeria is an Afro-Caribbean religious tradition, similar to voodoo, derived from traditional beliefs of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. From what I could discern from my internet readings, this was probably an offering to Legba or Ellugua, principle spirits in this form of worship. The colors on the coconuts signified the evocation of these spirits and the pentagram was actually a "veve", a religious symbol. People evoke the spirits to help them open and close the doors of the spiritual realm and to help facilitate conversation with even higher spirits. One of the things I noticed in my research is that the offering was left on Ascension Day; the day in the catholic church, 40 days after Easter, when Christ is supposed to have entered Heaven. Santeria and the related beliefs have assimilated Christian ideas over time.
Later that night Dan was on the 11 O'clock news. It showed him pointing to the area where the offering had been and there was an interview with his wife sitting on their porch discussing what happened. They also shared the photos that Dan had taken with his cell phone. The next day a friend of ours on the road to Montana called to say that they read about the event in USA Today! It had made the state by state news.
Over the next few days, I continued to do research. Dan too had done his own research. Dan is Puerto Rican and he was concerned that the ritual was aimed at him. He was rightly concerned because the offering was found outside his house, after all. Further, while our neighborhood as a variety of nationalities, my community is decidedly suburban and periodically some racist group comes around in the dead of the night dropping of hate material in everyone's mailbox. Dan thought this was aimed at him too.
After consulting elder members of his family, Dan was sent to see a Bruja, a witch, who lived in a nearby city. The Bruja told Dan that the offering was targeting him and that someone was jealous of him. Thus, they were summoning the spirits to harm Dan in some way; bring him down a peg or two. Dan was talked into buying several magical candles and some wolf urine that he was supposed to mix with his own urine and then sprinkle around the parameter of his property. I didn't ask where this urine came from, nor did I ask Dan if he performed this ceremony.
My wife's reaction was not much different. She was not home when the whole thing went down, so she didn't get to see the offering, only the pentagram. When I told her what happened she was more shocked them I was. She quickly grabbed a bottle of Holy Water ( she is catholic ) and went out to sprinkle the area where the offering had been. Later on she had Saint Christopher medals blessed at church and gave one to me and each of Dan's family.
I certainly didn't know what this ritual had been about, but there was nothing overtly negative about it, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Dan and I met daily to compare notes on what we had heard, leaning over the fence at night gossiping like two old men. We couldn't help but keep asking ourselves, why here? What does this mean?
Since Dan had been the one to call the police, they were keeping him appraised. It turned out that the goats had been purchased legally from a farm market in Pennsylvania and the police were hopeful of getting more information. Further, Dan was informed that a self proclaimed "expert" in unique religions had approached the police and offered their help. At this point the police were considering it.
For several days both Dan and I kept a closer eye on the neighborhood. I noticed the police around more as well and once saw the detectives sitting in their car just down the road.
About a week after the discovery, I came home from work to find Dan in the street talking to the detectives. I nearly ran over to them lest I miss out on something. As I walked up the police were in the process of telling Dan that they were closing out the investigation. The police were at a dead end with the goats heads and had no more information other than they had been legally purchased at a farmers market. The main reason for closing down the investigation was that really no crime had been committed as far as they could tell. The most they could arrest someone for was disturbing the peace or littering. They had more important things to do so they were letting it go.
They did have some good news for Dan, however. They had spoken to the expert and they were told that the offering was not something to be feared. According to the expert the offering was probably either left to help ease someone's transition into the after life or to petition the spirits to help keep such a person in this life, someone who was deathly ill. They reported that the cul-de-sac had been chosen because of its symbolic importance; a dead end and that was probably the only reason. It was not a hex put on anyone. Obviously I had no knowledge one way or the other, but what the police reported had the ring of truth to it, given all the symbolism in the offering and what I had learned about Santeria.
Since that day several years ago now, there has been no repeat performance. In the end, it's a great story to tell. People are fascinated by it, as I am. To this day, it intrigues me and I wonder about the person or persons who did this. I think it speaks to the changing demographics in my community. Obviously whoever did this believed in the power of what they were doing and such rituals, bizarre to us, are probably common place in their culture. Its certainly a lot more interesting than the garbage I often find dumped at the end of my street. I feel that I am somehow better off for having been a part of this. I have learned about something which is interesting and unique and I have come to better appreciate another culture I would not have otherwise known. I just hope that the offering had its desired effect.
The shades of dusk descend
with all the colors of the desert;
sand, blue sky, blood red.
Then they appear, the children
like ghosts, swathed in white
from the empty quarter. They come
fleeing the hell they left behind them;
the Lords Resistance Army.
They haunt the towns
each night, gathering
to themselves for refuge
against the dark rain.
The night commuters,
bus stations, churches,
grave yards and hospitals,
their only homes.
With the dawn they are gone
like morning mist
and bad dreams
to hide wherever shadows go
during the day.
Untold people have passed
this way, along
this well worn path.
Others eyes have seen
this and that.
Others have done
what I too
have done.
Some left
their mark, some a clue
only. Many more
like ghosts gone
by; casting only shadow.
Yet each has lent
their feet
to the treading
down the untamed
dirt and went on
before me
where surely I too
must one day go;
Leaving behind
only the lasting
impressions I made
on this earth.
