Footprints

 

I turn and look over my shoulder, feeling slightly irreverent

At the sight of my heavy boot-prints disrupting the pristine white snow

At my feet, a very cold, very happy Pug is romping

Attempting to catch the powder in his open mouth

And sputtering at its coldness

His panting mouth looks like a smile of ecstatic joy

And, as suddenly as I make the observation of his happiness,

He bounds off to the end of his leash

Bouncing giddily in the fresh snow

Somehow, his tracks do not strike me as being as offensive as mine

Somehow, his make sense

 

Outside My Window, Snow

 

The snow has stopped falling for the night

The street lights reflecting off snow flakes

Light up the evening in a bright luminance

That can only be seen on a winter’s night

 

I will pull the warm blanket over my shoulders

And melt into my wife

 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~

peace, wayf 

There is really nothing you must be and there is nothing you must do. There is really nothing you must have and there is nothing you must know. There is really nothing you must become. However, it helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains, the earth gets wet.

-Zen saying

 

peace, wayf

Just thought I'd post some summertime photos for you all today to help you get through this chilly first day of Feb. 

 

We have had snow flurries all day here, but it is considerably warmer than it has been for the last couple of days. 

I love winter, but these photos sure did make me feel warmer today.

Happy Februrary!

 

peace, wayf 

I’ve never known war

I’ve not seen the bloody faces

The dismembered bodies of my comrades

Fallen to some indefinable foe

Who stands ‘over there’

I haven’t heard the bombs

Or smelled the gunpowder

Or felt the ground quake beneath my feet

I’ve never known war

 

My uncle came home from ‘Nam

A changed man to most who knew him

But the uncle who returned to me

Was the only one I ever knew

Silent, reserved, trapped in the sea of despair

That had become his life ‘over there’

He knew war first hand

And it destroyed him from the inside

 

I’ve never known war

I’ve never felt the hatred welling up in my gut

For someone I had never met

Simply because it was them I was told to hate

For my being dumped in the middle of a jungle

Fresh out of High School

Thousands of miles from home

Not knowing if I would ever get back

Thinking of my mother and father

And hoping they slept well at night

I’ve never known war

 

But, I saw its remnants once

When I peered into the sad eyes of my uncle

As we sat over a beer, and he told me of ‘Nam

And the bear of a man who I respected as a pillar of strength

Cried as he told me how he loaded the dead bodies

Of his friends on to a ‘Huey’ in the steaming jungle

 

I watched the tears stream down his face

And his hulking shoulders tremble

As he tried valiantly not to cry in front of me

And I hugged him tightly

                                And buried my face in his shoulder

And we cried together

 

He was still strong,

The strongest man I have ever known

And he hated himself because of that war

                    And I hated myself because I couldn’t help him

And we drank another beer

 

I’ve never known war

But I have known a warrior

And I know that the deepest wounds

Left by that war have never healed

 

I’ve never known war

But it has wounded me

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

 

peace, wayf

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would see sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

“Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we’re frantic, life will be frantic. If we’re peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.”

-Marianne Williamson

 

“There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.”

-Black Elk

 

 

 

*~*~*

peace, wayf