There are always many tales to tell but I’d like to use today’s column to reflect on life’s blessings.

I have been through many physical problems these past few years but I am feeling just fine, all things considered. I thank the Lord, who has blessed me with many fine doctors who have kept me going strong.

I also want to thank this fabulous community for their prayers and support for both me and my kids. I’d like to offer two of my poems to all of you with the hope they inspire you in some way.

By time alone do we differ

I ponder the snowflake perfect in form, not another of millions can duplicate, its flawless designs of individual kind as random as fingerprints pressed on a plate, yet all it foretells is the birth of a storm.

At times it dissolves with the heat of the ground, this perfect creation is what it will cost, a storm less severe, it fails to adhere, its singular beauty forever lost, away to oblivion, ne’er to be found.

If the earth remains cold through its downward migration, it will alter its beauty in a much different way.

With much of its class, it will cluster en masse, engulfed like a sunbeam in the light of the day, once again lost, this perfect creation.

Infinitesimal I feel the thought shatters my mind, an eternal force has created this flake, its beauty sublime shares but a moment in time, for endless are the variations the Creator can make, and I see that I, too, am one of a kind.

Your soul can fly

Avarice, greed and jealousy are not unlike celibacy. Too much pride and ego self leaves you dormant on a shelf. Those who criticize and boast will never see the Holy Ghost; it’s hard to find humility, to say the world is more than me. Just live your life with brother love, you’ll be an eagle within a dove, you’ll know what life’s fate has in store and your soul will fly where eagles soar.