I wrote my first poem when I was a slightly out of control  eighteen year old sophomore at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio in 1977.  I was bored one evening, so I went to see a movie with a couple friends.  After the movie, I told them to go on back to the dorm without me. I lay on a park bench and stared into a beautifully clear, fall night sky.  I saw a shooting star and felt so insignificant.  As I walked back to my room, words just started filling my head.  I wrote “Child of the World” in about twenty minutes.  It came out just like it sounds. 

I felt like I was at the emotional bottom of the barrel and had somehow pulled myself back up with my own words.  Wow, what an exhilarating ride.  The poem wasn’t a masterpiece, but the feeling it gave me was like nothing I’d ever known.  Almost every poem I’ve written since then has come to me like that first one.  It’s like they are already out there and I’m a receiver that picks up the signals and translates the message.  I expect every poem I write to be the last and I always ask myself, "what kind of swansong would this poem be?".  Same said, I never know when or if I'll be done with this website.

I never really set out to write even the first poem. Nonetheless, they are all real pieces of my life. If this never gets wide circulation, at least I’ll be able to pass down my life to my children … beauty, warts, glory, shame, and all. 

All the searching you read in these lines has only lead me to this conclusion:

"The truly righteous person rises above symbols, rules, rituals, and fables, but feels the power and love that connects everything in the universe and does their best to live their lives in harmony with them"