A special thanks to Eva Hinds, who dedicated her time and continued to give endless encouragement to the preparation and distribution of this book.
The Time Capsule
Exposed to the finer things of life
Developed a passion for botany
That consumed most of his time
In his cellar, he grows a garden
With orchids and exotic plants.
There in command of his pen
As the next passion of his life
The one he holds as his dearest
Frequently he spends an entire day
Writes from morning until night.
Never left his beloved sanctuary
Of his garden and his favored pen
One day at noon, he heard a blast
He peeped through the window
Only to notice that it was dark.
Perhaps the blast of a thunderstorm
Like the others this, too, will pass
Engulfed by his writing he heeded not
But continued until the morning
Again, he peeped through his window.
It seemed to have grown much darker
With that, he laid aside his pen
To ponder what it might have been
Yes, the fear had reached him now
Perplexed, he scratched his weary head.
Once again but now in fear he peeped
Through the dampened cellar window
To notice the absent of life outside
When many days had passed and gone
He went upstairs and exited his home.
There, the first to greet his eyes
A book he wrote, the time capsule
Speechless, he stood alone and scared
Embarking upon the only obvious quest
To see what has become of man.
The Strides of Man
If by creation
From the paradise of Eden’s garden,
Where we were
First introduced to this our world
To the land of Sodom,
Where we were almost extinct,
Our journey thus far
I have embraced as the strides of man.
If we were
Introduced by creation,
We have risen and fallen.
And if by evolution,
Then we have gained by leaps and bounds
From our four
Planted on the ground,
To now our upward stand.
Our journey thus far
Is still gigantic in the strides of man,
From apes to modern man,
From caves to the towers we climbed,
Evolving from mumbling mute
To fluent and eloquent tongue.
Creation or evolution,
The Big Bang or Eden’s garden paradise,
Planting our footprints on the moon,
To splitting of the atom;
A journey we all should be proud of,
Known as the strides of man.
But we have tainted our hands
Spilling the blood of our fellowman.
As Cain slew his brother Abel
And spilled blood upon the virgin land
To the mountain of Afghanistan,
Where a war we now pursue
With bombs and automatic rifles,
We are on our downward slope,
Fast approaching the extinction of man.
Mother
It’s not too long ago since I realized
How much she meant to me,
But it’s been a long time since I have noticed
The gentleness and kindness she had shown to me.
The load she carried must have been heavy and fatiguing.
Only a mother could have known,
And though being loved by my daddy,
He couldn’t have helped her share that load.
The load upon her head must have been heavy too
With nine months of wondering, “Will God see me through?”
Yet she bore the anguish and pain and brought me to this world
And showed me her love far beyond compare.
Looking back at my childhood,
I can’t but remember how sweet it used to be
When she clutched me with her warm and tender arms
And lay me on her breasts to rest.
When
