Words for the Wise

I'm very pleased with how my fragmented and "broad-based" career experience has developed into my current position as a wordsmith. (For any reader who doesn't know, I serve as editor-in-chief of ibm.com/storage. I take technical marketing information and turn it into compelling Web copy.) And it follows that I'm thrilled that both my sons are drawn to words.

Tyler has developed wonderful critical-thinking skills (with a tip of my hat to his teachers at Interlochen Arts Academy) and writes insightfully about a number of topics on his Ignorance is Piss blog (see link on the left column of this page) and his new Youngstown Renaissance blog. He also writes program notes for the Tucson Symphony Orchestra program book, and is highly complimented for his way with words.

TJ is a poet. I love reading his words and want to continually encourage him to pursue that avocation. He wrote some lovely verse about John that I posted on my Website. These words are especially poignant to me now, as we're two days away from the 9th anniversary of John's death. Here are those words.

I've mentioned that he has a new lady in his life. I sense a new lightness and brightness in him and that makes me happy. This morning he shared with me a poem he wrote recently about his new lady and, with his permission, I post it here.

At This Moment (She Is)

She is form and she is function
She is style and she is substance
She is prose and poetry
Fact and fantasy
She is truth and beauty
Wit and wisdom
She is an explosion of all five senses
(And then some)

She is a phoenix goddess
Worlds destroyed and empires built
In deep devotion to her

She is purple ink and orange-dyed eggs
She is springtime love
And sex in the afternoon
She is the calm and the storm
And, best of all
She is mine
Not for ever
Maybe not even for tomorrow
But for now, at this moment

And at this moment
Holds the promise of a
Thousand thousand moments to come
Each one sweeter and more magical
than the one before it

And maybe tomorrow
Maybe at some moment before forever
That promise will turn out to be a lie
But if so, it will have been
The most beautiful lie I have ever heard

(4/15/07)