Afterword To The Third Edition

A message from the author

The best thing we can do is help each other. Not that it's an easy thing; it's not. Oh, you may easily hold a door aside to let a blind man pass or teach a young girl how to sing or show a tortured soul some cause for new true hope, and the blessings that flow from doing right shall then infuse that moment of your life, and all of this shall flow quite easily through your hands from time to time. And I bless you for the doing of these things as well. But in between those happy moments, what other business should we be about?

What I have learned so far is this: The subtle mighty ebb and flow of this world has set some highest destiny for each of us. Our highest destiny is written in our stars perhaps, or in our genes, or in the living web of circumstance wherein we stand; written there by knowing fate perhaps or striving tangled chance and illumined deep within us by a ray of distant brilliant light. Your proper business is to read that epigraph within you and to live the life that it foretells.

This book is all about some folks who try to live like that, guided by some whispering inner light, each in their own way struggling through the tangles of the world. Some find an open path and some are lost a while. My faith is only this; that every individual who does what he or she should really do will clear the road a little, build some wayside shelter it may be or strike a bargain with the spirits of the place, set a flowering lily here and there or scatter apple seeds, turn and shout back to the rest about the further view.

This book is the fruit of twenty years' work for me, twenty years of searching for a poet's voice while scribbling anagrams, sketching scenery on scraps of bark that I toss out to the breeze. I've gathered up some bits, arranged and edited the parts to make a whole, glued the cover on and put it here for you to find. I most sincerely hope you get some use from it.