I list to a call more ancient than art or form.
I feel the raindrop and the ray of sun.
I cannot check my impulse to feel.
The substance of my feelings are not altogether clear to me.
Their structure is not always open to my investigation.
A gust of wind conveys to me a longing,
and a certain music composes me,
but I cannot say why.

My soul existed prior to any of my other acquisitions.
I like and dislike spontaneously.
The soul either welcomes or rejects whatever strikes it instantaneously.
The determination is no more mine
than is the decision of my heart to beat.
I cannot help what I like or feel.
My power is limited to extent and quality.
I can be the best me possible,
or I can aggravate myself
by continually going in opposition to my instincts.

Between People

How little we really know about anything at all. After we live a lifetime how little we know of life. Life is feeling, loving, and hoping, but how difficult to pinpoint those things. It is not our houses, the land, and the money, but it is what goes on between people that matters. It is the feelings we cannot put into words, and the emotions that lift us up or cast us down.

This is something we never master, dealing with people, and understanding them. In a sense they are the whole of our existence, for all the other things of life are superfluous. It is for the people we live. We think it is for ourself, but all the time it is for the people in order to gain their love, respect, and admiration.

We need other people to fulfill us. In society is the beauty and harmony we seek. Our lives all touch. We are welded to the tiniest atom of the universe. We are diminished by another's death, and perchance even by another's sorrow.

The Stars

At an early age we learn to revere the stars. They are perhaps the first objects that create in us awe, and that cause us to wonder at and admire the universe. Those twinkling lights out there, the stars, are our first glimpses of mystery.

In youth they speak to us of the unknown. Somehow nothing in life quite compares to the stars. The stars are beyond knowing. They are symbols of life's eternal quest. The stars are mysteries past finding out, but ever sources of wonderment, and reasons to search the wide world and our souls as well.

Living breathing creatures all,
Hear them crying, hear them call!
In the marsh, and in the sea,
Some are bound and some are free;

On the mountains reaching high
creatures all, they live and die;
Some forgotten die alone
Some leave traces to be known.

For some life is but a day,
Some have years to have their say,
Some are still, some roar at the moon,
Some are always out of tune.

After sunup hear the sound,
Countless creatures all around.
Even after sunset may come
Various sounds and songs of some.

In the tall grass they may live
Or home the tall trees may give,
Some may find the cave their home
Open spaces others may roam.

Creatures in their way alike,
yet their own pathway must strike
Living breathing creatures all,
Hear them crying, hear them call!

The Cold Spring Water

There is more to a place than houses and fields, and acres on a deed, there are memories. There are memories of valleys deep and shaded where little springs ooze forth, and wild flowers bloom. It is the feeling one gets in autumn climbing a hill, and the effect of a summer shower that endears a place. It is waking up to familiar sights, and getting to love the things we have become so used to that we would not change them for all the world.

A home is a feeling deep inside us, and no matter where we go or what we do, we never forget our childhood home. I remember the spring that flowed near my childhood farm house. The spring flowed from the base of a hill, and it was the coldest, clearest, sweetest water in the world. As a boy I used to lower my fingers into its cold, clear water, and wonder at the tinkling coldness of the water even in the heat of summer.

The water was so cold I could not hold my fingers in the water very long without them becoming numb. I saw it in the heat of summer still pouring its cold stream forth while the ground around revealed large cracks for want of rain, and I remember seeing the brown leaves and acorns from the old oak tree standing just above it fall and almost clog its free flow in autumn.

I remember seeing the ice in winter freeze part way over it, but never more, and I recall the snow banked on both sides. In the springtime I remember how the world came alive again around the spring's sparkling waters.I remember unloading hay into the barn, and then walking over to the spring feeling hot, dusty, and as if I was going to suffocate, and then taking a drink of the cold water and how good it tasted. I used to dip the dipper into the water and lift it to my mouth, and not drink right away, but just breathe in the water's clean, fresh smell before drinking it.

The water from the spring made me feel refreshed, and to see the whole world in a clearer, fresher light. Sometimes I would look into its clear waters, and wonder at its unceasing stream. I would wonder what strange subterranean passages it must flow through. Sometimes I would wonder about what sights it has witnessed over the ages, and what it may yet behold before the day it stops flowing. Everytime I drank of the waters of that wonderful spring I felt a new love and appreciation for life.