I was born (according to my mother and certified by the great state of Missouri) on the eighth day of the eighth month in the eighth hour of evening at the end of the longest, hottest dog-day of summer in 1953; fifty miles west of the Mississippi River, and just south of the Mason Dixon Line in the French Hamlet of Bonne Terre - "good earth". After seventeen years of normal education and indoctrination in public schools and Sunday schools, I migrated south to Florida and converted form hillbilly to cracker. Received a high school diploma in 1972 issued by the state of Florida while attending community college for that purpose - beyond that my education is mostly self inflicted. Worked for 36 years in restaurant, transportation and equestrian industries. Father of three sons and one daughter, all adults. Have one granddaughter age 13. Divorced for several years. Like to think of myself (not too seriously) as; "A highwayman and a peregrine and the soul of every sailor who ever went to sea." -paraphrased quote from Robert James Waller's " the Bridges of Madison County.

Retired Teamster/UPS driver, safety trainer and labor rep.; a student of humanity's philosophies, and a scribbler of prose and poetry. If I can say it in just fourteen lines, I'll call it a sonnet (little song) and civilly, sincerely, discuss the same with all who respond. Words I try to live by; "Read ten times more than you write... listen to your natural earth soul... there are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads." - again, paraphrasing Waller.

"Night Sonnets"

that which I call sonnets

from my past and present from my heart and soul

obsessions, depressions, and passions

from my own mind, into

the bloody ink of my pen

to my lovers and enemies

my family and friends

to strangers who never speak

to hopeless who never seek

to angels dark and light

to spirits of every night

to love, on that fourteenth line of free verse

hung on a tree; an ancient earthly curse