THE WILD FLOWERS

The most beautiful flowers I ever see Bloom in undisciplined array, around an empty farm home where all have moved away.

Untended and uncared for, these beauties have their pride, and bloom a little richer, an unknow lawn to hide.

Each spring they come back once again to make the place more fair, and pay their silent tribute to the one who placed them there.

And wise Old Mother Nature protects in her own way, and sows wild briars among them to help these beauties stay.

I often long to take them home, and give them love and care, but well I know it would be wrong, to move her gems from there.

John L. Gwaltney

MY SLINGSHOT

I fashioned a weapon way back in my youth, I often think of it now. And tho' it was only a sling shot back then, it enriched my childhood somehow.

The strong rubber I cut from an old Intertube, the stock I took from an ash. The pocket I cut from the tongue of a shoe, The string I found in the trash.

The rocks that it shot I found on the road, I picked only the round and the best. I held her on target -- pulled back to my ear, the slingshot would do all the rest.

My front pocket I used to carry my rocks, I knew how many by guess, there was always holes in the pocket behind, the place where my sling-shot would rest.

As the years passed by my values would change, I laid my sling-shot away. I took my place with the rest of the men, but I think of my sling-shot today.

John L. Gwaltney