Friendships
Building friendships has never been easy for mortals. Maintaining lasting friendships is even more difficult, but web rings or circles of common interests and concerns is an excellent way to try to maintain lasting relationships.
In the process of building and trying to maintain friendships we have been humbly honored by those who call Heartland "home."
Communities as such like Farm, Creek, and Woods no longer exist. However the community of Community Leaders often get together via ICQ, Yahoo! Chat, emails, and actually make phone calls to share ideas, help each other with problems, brain storm, and just enjoy fellowship. So when the honor to the left was received from the fellowship of CL's we were, well shocked.
Perhaps in some way my family will appreciate the honor more than myself, for spending a great deal of time online helping residents of GeoCities and others too, with some tangible proof that we have not been "just fooling around" is gratifying.
This Poem is for Murray the first Co-Liaison under whom I serve and Jan who is recently engaged (now married) and who created the award, and all who upon inward inflection shall embrace "amazing grace."
The Celestial Surgeon, by Robert Lewis Stephenson - For Jan and Murray,
If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: -
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!
Samuel Greenberg's life as a writer lasted only a handful of years (from 1912 to early1917), but during those years, he wrote over six hundred poems and other works -- both in notebooks (fifteen or more) and on loose pages (everything from fine stationary and graph paper to toilet tissue and blank hospital exam forms). His poem Early Ghosts is my tribute to Bari and my Creek Friends.
Early Ghosts, by Samuel Greenberg
When first I beheld
The sight of self alone,
Here standing upon a floor--
A new sensitive throne--
By dark corners round
I shaded myself, in hope
That some light or people
Would be seen through a grate.
But by the might of pictures
Each sighted object looked
As if my soul was but a fortune--
To its memory, meaning booked.
Friendships - For Paula Moore Creek Co-Liaison In Appreciation
Along the narrow inlet of the sea,
vigil fires braced against the storm;
Awaiting The Faerie Mother and thee,
whose earthly bodies took another form.
Spirits from days of yester year and yore,
who had gone before to prepare the way;
Silently filled the inlet even to the shore,
hearken to their mingled voices: What do they say?
From the thoughts written in kinship,
contained in the pages of life for all to see;
We gather in witness to a lasting friendship,
which nothing in this life will cause or cease to be.