Reward

I was driving home the other day when as I came up on Wildwood to the junction with Mahaley there was a snapper, right there in the middle of the road. I stopped the truck, got our, and walked back to where he was. Picked him up, and as I was walking back to the truck he was snapping at the air as I was holding way back on his shell. But he was pissed, and wanted with all his heart to heart who/whatever it was that had taking him from his chosen path. * I laid him down in the bed of the truck, jerking my hands away before he could spin and snap my finger off. Getting back in the truck I drove on home, and turned into the driveway stopping in front of the gat in front of the pond where I got out, went back to the bed where the snapper was. Standing on the running board I reached down, picked him up, and walked over to the pond where I dropped him into the water at the edge of the pond. He looked up, turned around, and swam to where the water was deep enough for him to dive, and dove out of sight into the muddy water with no idea that he had been rescued, just a profound irritation at my having interfered with its life, and a great desire to snap my fingers off! * How many times have you helped someone and they disappeared from your life with no sign of gratitude? Well if you were doing it for their thanks you were doing it for the wrong reason. You should help other for your own well being, not their thanks and gratitude. If that is your reason for helping then that is your reword or disappointment. If you do it just because you can, then you store your reward in heaven.

The Race

Here we were again, Taz and I
Having cantered the course ,
One half mile from start to end.
Now standing beside the trailer
Waiting for the flag to drop,
I intently watching the hand
The hand that held the flag.
Taz pawing anxious inside.
Then the flag was drop,
And our time began to run.
Opening the trailer door,
Taz walked out onto the ground.
Putting my foot in the sturp
I swung onto her back,
And without urging
Taz jumped into the canter
Which we held as we crossed
the wooden platform 30 foot long.
Slowing to the trot just long enough
To grab the proffered rope which
I dallied to the horn as Taz Jumped
Into the gallop, not even slowing down
As I drop the rope dragging the log
And charged to the first turn.
Barley loosing speed we turn right
And headed as fast as Taz could go
To the jump strait ahead.
Unhesitating over and on down
To the next turn, we passed the judges
At a full run to the next turn.
And there they were, three small
High, but not to wide hills in a row.
Taz was as eager as I and we went
Into the first one way too fast.
As Taz came across the first one
At the top she jumped and I lost my seat
As Taz started down I was still going up
And when she hit the ground I was slammed
Hard into the saddle and bounced
Bounced right over her head
Landing flat of my back on the ground
Right in front of Taz.
Taz is 16 hands, and the hill was over
Eight feet high, a real long ways
To the ground, but I never let go of the reins
But I did loose my hat.
Taz, excitated by the race, drug me around
A while before calming down.
After she came to herself, I stood
And remounted and continued on.
Taking the second and third hill
At an appropriate speed.
Then down into the water ditch for 40 feet,
Out of the water, we made the next turn
And started the last quarter mile.
A hard sprint with two more right turns
As hard as we could we charged to the finish
It was a beautiful fall I was told,
But I only finished 9th out of 22 riders.

A new, forged of the old

I have came to this day,
As a new day,
A parting of the way.

Leaving the old
For the new.
A new, forged of the old.

For this day
Is born of yesterday.
Which was in its turn

Was begat by all the days
That passed before.
This coming after that.

And that leading to this.
Bourn a child,
Grown to a man.

A man with dreams
Whose plans always
Fell short of the dreams.

Time did show
That this is not
Always bad.

For if you shoot for the stars
And only reach the moon, You are
much higher then the ground.

Now I am to this place,
A place where it seems
I can find all I ever sought.

A man can only take
Himself so far, He need
A woman to make it complete.

An unshared life is no life at all.
But both must desire to share,
Or there is no sharing at all.

Now to this new day of which I spoke,
She looks to share as much
As I wish to share.

So like the Phoenix from its ashes
I take flight into her arms
Seeking the solace she give so freely.

But not only in her comfort
But to the adventure we have
Waiting for our taking.


To My Darling Sherry
From my heart,
Rexx Vernon Shelton

Yes, I do Choose

Yes I choose, but sometimes the only choice is to endure.

Some times thoughts unbidden cloud my mind, and leave no choice rather then to let them fly their course. And feelings, un-invoked, wash over me sometimes like a sea. I am not an island, so self contained, that some choices cannot be forced upon me, some choices are no more then a Hobson choice. Yes I choose, and I think, and I feel, but I am not always the genesis of thoughts that runs through my mind.

Satisfaction , like comfort, is always fleeting. No more then obtained before it is gone to be sought again. I eat until I am satisfied, then hunger leads me to once again seek satisfaction. I find my comfort in my bed, but toss and turn all night leaving the spot that has become uncomfortable to seek it else where. What suited us at one time is no longer the attraction it was, and we look to change things more to our suiting. The only thing certain in life is change.

I would rather do this than that, but circumstances conspire such that I must do that and let this go the way of an unfulfilled desire. I love her, but she does not love me, she love me but I do not love her. Frustration not of my choosing, but of my choices. But really, do I choose who to love? Is that a freedom given unto men? Or is it the arrow in Cupid’s bow that decides?

I don’t like my job, it is a job I chose, and I can choose to leave it. But can I choose not to pay the rent, make the car payments, buy the groceries for my child? Must I not, at more times then not, do that which, if left to my rathers, I would choose not to do? The road before me chooses the way much more then I do, for I can only choose between the choices put before me. And each decision casts a long shadow into the future.

A decision to go to collage or not, to marry or not, to be a Doctor, Lawyer, or an Indian Chef all lays out a different path. To choose is to determine what choices will be placed before you. So what freedom do you have be what you would want to be? A child born to a coal miner his path will be different then the path of a child born to a movie actor. Yes, some coal miner’s children become movie actors, but how many movie actors’ children become coal miners?

You are shaped and formed by every experience in the path you walk. Hard times, for some, shatter them into thefts, or welfare dependents. Easy time are the ruination of others. Those same hard or easy times yet for other build a foundation for success. Maybe not in a way they would have choose if the choice had been theirs to make, but one that they, and those who know them, are proud they have found. This is where the adage, “The man does not pick the job, the job picks the man” comes from.

What is the different between the doctor/lawyer and the theft/welfare cheat? This is not to say that all those who are on welfare are undeserving of the charity they receive. Well let me rephrase that, for no one is deserving of charity. To deserve one must fulfill a bargain, the worker is deserving of his pay, the employer deserving of the labor he pay for, but the man watching the work is not deserving neither the worker’s pay, nor the employer’s money.

Both, however, should be free to give to the non-worker if it is their free decision to do so, that is their choice. But when the government takes if from both the employer and the worker and give it to the non-worker, that is theft. For the only choice given to the employer and the worker is to give to the non-worker or go to jail or die in resisting the government.

But back to the question, what is the different between the different outcomes, between the one who becomes a carpenter respected for his labor, and the decision he had made when choices were put before him, and the bad check writer who decided that his need and wants are greater then the bank’s whose money he defrauded? They both start out on a path not of their choosing, they were born to whom they were born, and where and when they were born. Choices that they did not and could not chose were presented to them.

Nature or nurture? Your genes or your environment? What of the brothers that both were loved, went to the same school, and killed their parents? When next door all the children lived model lives. And consider President Clinton and his bother Roger, what explains the different? Genes are demonstrable not the answer. Just as sure, as the Coal Miner’s Daughter shows, the environment is not the answer.

The answer must lie within the mind, soul if you will, of the individual. According to their personality they chose between the choices presented to them, and react to them in the manner that their heart leads them. One to stay in school, another to sell drugs on the street. One to quite selling and using drugs, another to kill to keep his business. One to do their homework, another to think that school is a waste of time.

As we go through live on the path that God has put us upon we are shaped by our experiences, and it is our experiences that lead to or away form God.

Jeremiah 18-19:
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words." So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the LORD came to me: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? says the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it.

Romans 9:19-21
Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

There Was a Child Lost Today

There was a child lost today, Sixteen and dead,
Overdosed on pain pills she whored herself for.
She would do anything to get high, to get by.
Her mother was in jail for drugs
Her father sold crack to get his hits.
She had been out on the street
Since she was twelve,
Buying and selling herself and drugs.
She didn’t have a chance, and now she is dead.
A mom and dad hooked on getting high
Her mother sold her for ten rocks
When she was thirteen, told her to grit her teeth,
That it would not hurt much, and not last long.
She did, and it didn’t, and she learned
Better to be high then not, mother knew best.
Oh she could have been this
And she could have been that,
But she is dead, and none of that.
There was a child lost today
Her mother consoled,
But should have been dammed.
Who will speak for the child dead today?
Her father had to go home early to make a score.
Aunts and uncles knew, but no one cared.
If the school teachers didn’t know
Then they didn’t care either.
The friends she got high with
Left the funeral to get high,
The boys she slept with to get pills
Left to find another girl who will
Be bedded for pills.
There was a child lost today, Sixteen and dead.

His Image and Likeness

More times then not I find it hard to accept what I am not. For I would be that which I am not and striving to be that which I would, falling short time and time again. More kind, more forgiving, more perfect.

Sometimes it is no more then a dream, a concept. Yet other times almost achieved. But now it seems that I have came to this ends that I must begin again what it is I wish to be.

I, and only I, get to decide each step, but the path before me is laid by God or fate, and I only get to choice the choice placed before me. You came into my life through these words I send to the world, and the meaning is imparted are those that you choose to give them .

One, two a hundred, or a thousand it matters not for I am me and you are you, if you exist. I know, “If I prick you, do you not bleed?” Well let me prick you and let us see. Are my words enough to bring forth anguish? Or must it be my slings and arrows?

I have lost myself inside of me time and time again. Have you not done the same, and go searching around inside of yourself to find you? You know you could be me, just another fascist. When you drop back deep within yourself do you not find a part that never changes? A part that is always the same, the part that picks and chooses, says yay or nay.

Its likes and dislikes change, its attitude changes, its understanding changes, but it stays the same and always observing. From the time I was a child this has been true for me, and I believe that it is true for you as well. It is this in us that I believe to be the Breath of God, the part in which we carry His Image and Likeness.

Good Advice

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Good advice,
We give it all the time.
But then,
More often then not,
We ignore
That sage advise.

Going into the book section
In the airport
Before out flight,
And what is it we look at
To decide which
Book to buy?
Why the Cover, of course.

We walk into the dance hall,
And watch them come in.
Too fat, to short,
Bad taste in closes.
On and on it goes
Judging by the surface
And not the deeper person.

Why, pray tell,
Do we,
Time and time again,
Ignore what we know
Is right,
And do that which
We know is wrong?

Time! Time is the answer
My friend.
We just do not
Have the time
To read every book
Know every person
Well enough to judge.

So we do the best we can
With what we have.
Making snap judgments
On the fly
All the time.
And it for ourselves
That we make that admonishment:

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
For we know that we are
Deeper then we appear,
Wider, by far,
Then a brief introduction
Could ever
Reveal!