April is National Poetry Month, so I dug in the dust bin for two older pieces, thanks for indulging me, and thanks for reading.

The Leaf and the Nowhere Hole Often during falls chill, when seasons change; green goes to gray, the air is crisper, the rain, a precursor to the coming snow, life for a leaf hangs by a bare thread unsure of how much time it has until it is snatched from its perch, made ready for its fall from grace. It happens one day when one season makes way for another; the right pressure, followed by the loneliest sound a leaf can hear...it is like a lover leaving with the those forever and final steps that it happens. From the top of this mighty maple, down its hardened outstretched arms it floats with little lift from Autumn's air to a cold, crisp bed of grass. Suddenly a gust of wind lifts the leaf, elevated to new heights of hope, looking skyward with the dream that it would somehow be reattached to the now barren limb. Rain falls, what can this little leaf do to survive? Pushed up by the wind, pressed down by the rain, soon, the rain wins this battle and the leaf is left to soak in a cold, heartless bath...of a drain...where it circles, folds, circles, wrinkles into unnatural shapes and circles until it is gone to a nowhere hole nevermore to be the greatest leaf of them all.  ~~~~~
	Boy on the Fence In October of 1998, Matthew Shepard, a young college student from Laramie, Wyoming met two young men in a bar. They left in an old pick-up truck which would take them out to a desolate spot along the darkened highway which followed a fence line where Matthew was beaten and left bloody, bruised and broken. Matthew was not found until the next day by a young boy who found him, he said... "He [Matthew] looked like a dead animal, caught, and strung out on this fence." Matthew died later, but in the process, a group was formed called the Laramie Project which was commissioned to travel from New York City to Laramie... to meet the townspeople, and they discovered, it would take more than one trip to Laramie to unravel the attitudes of its inhabitants.  Thanks to Matthew's mother, Judy, Hate Crime Legislation was passed in 2009, and is on the books everywhere in this country, protecting the rights of citizens that might become victims of hate and violence. Out on that Wyoming highway There he hung on an old barbed fence Two young men with anger in their hearts, Destroyed a life, the crime it made no sense. Some of the townspeople were deeply saddened, But many were maddened by the atrocity of this crime The righteous said “God” was punishing Matthew for stepping over the line.      The real crime, taking a life, with no regard for human kind… this is just so wrong. Do we ever stop to think that the lessons we teach children, are the lessons they will take with them for the rest of their life? If we teach our young, wise virtues of love, honor, respect and truth, That is exactly what they will do in return. If we teach our young hate, vengeance and violence, that is exactly what they will do in return. Matthew Shepard, a young college student from Laramie, Wyoming was left alone, broken and bloody, along that fence, on a chilly night,  to die, only because he was gay.