Slow Dance
This is a poem written by a teenager with cancer.
She wants to see how many people get her poem.
It is quite the poem
Please pass it on.
This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital.
It was sent by a medical doctor -
Make sure to read what is in the closing statement
AFTER THE POEM.
SLOW DANCE
Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
Do you run through each day on the fly?
When you ask, “How are you?”
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done, do you lie in your bed,
with the next hundred chores running through your head?
You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short
The music won't last.
Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,'Hi'
You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last..
When you run so fast to get somewhere,
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift....
Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.
This is a poem written by a teenager with cancer.
She wants to see how many people get her poem.
It is quite the poem
Please pass it on.
This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital.
It was sent by a medical doctor -
Make sure to read what is in the closing statement
AFTER THE POEM.
SLOW DANCE
Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
Do you run through each day on the fly?
When you ask, “How are you?”
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done, do you lie in your bed,
with the next hundred chores running through your head?
You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short
The music won't last.
Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,'Hi'
You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last..
When you run so fast to get somewhere,
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift....
Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.
Yeah, often we don't even recognize some of those things until they are long past and unrecoverable.
Just returned from an extended weekend trip to celebrate my father-in-laws 91st birthday. Enroute we stopped briefly at my wife's old college. She hardly recognized the place! Most of the buildings didn't exist when she attended, and about half the buildings she knew are either gone or radically changed. We tried to find the location where I asked her to marry me, and had to settle for about +/-50 yards of uncertainty - it's either underneath one of those new buildings, or in an adjacent greenspace. I certainly didn't expect to find a little brass plaque on the spot, but we didn't think the location would be so unrecognizable.
Her dad is noticeably deteriorated since my mother-in-law died of Alzheimer's last summer. That may force some decisions in the near future, but that's not what grabbed everybody's attention. The barn is gone! Well, almost - main timbers, some siding, and some obsolete equipment left over from a small-time dairy operation are stacked around the barnyard. There's a pile of materials strewn within the fieldstone foundation walls, waiting to be sorted, salvaged, or eventually burned.
The major part of the barn was already there when my father-in-law's family bought the place over a century ago. I admired the hand-hewn 10x10 oak timbers, hand-cut mortises and wooden pegs that held the structure together for about 125 years. Even after my father-in-law retired from active farming, that structure continued to perform most of its original purpose as my nephew worked his farm. I wonder if the original builders, in some afterlife, know that the product of their efforts continued to serve well after they were gone. I wish I could say that of the things I design and build.
Last fall a squall line moved across a quarter of the continent, spawned tornadoes from Missouri to Michigan, and found a rotted joint in one of the main corner posts. Even with one corner unsupported the barn stood through the winter, though everybody knew there wasn't enough money to do a proper repair - and no compelling reason to do so even if funds were available. A couple of local Amish families were hired to dismantle the structure. It seems fitting and respectful that horses supplied most of the force and energy needed to bring the barn down.
With the debris and refuse collected within the foundation walls there aren't even reference points that memories can be pinned to. Where was that rickety ladder leading to the hay mow? The rope swing hung from a rafter? The corner where the beds were made when they slept there on a summer night? The mazes they constructed by stacking and arranging hay bales? What would the barn swallows do when they returned in a few weeks? Unlike my wife and her siblings, I didn't grow up there. Even so, I looked at the pile of electrical wire and fixtures and wondered which of it I was working on with her dad when I asked permission to marry his oldest daughter. And how many from the family had made love there amid the sounds and smells of cows, hay, and feed, as my wife and I had.
Now the primary visual feature of the farmstead is gone. On Sunday my wife and I walked back to the woodlot. When I turned around to head back home . . . it seemed like there was no home to head to. No reference point to steer toward. Only after walking to the first gentle rise could we see the house and yard across the field. Only after it was gone did I appreciate the many ways the old barn had touched and affected our lives.
Dale
Just returned from an extended weekend trip to celebrate my father-in-laws 91st birthday. Enroute we stopped briefly at my wife's old college. She hardly recognized the place! Most of the buildings didn't exist when she attended, and about half the buildings she knew are either gone or radically changed. We tried to find the location where I asked her to marry me, and had to settle for about +/-50 yards of uncertainty - it's either underneath one of those new buildings, or in an adjacent greenspace. I certainly didn't expect to find a little brass plaque on the spot, but we didn't think the location would be so unrecognizable.
Her dad is noticeably deteriorated since my mother-in-law died of Alzheimer's last summer. That may force some decisions in the near future, but that's not what grabbed everybody's attention. The barn is gone! Well, almost - main timbers, some siding, and some obsolete equipment left over from a small-time dairy operation are stacked around the barnyard. There's a pile of materials strewn within the fieldstone foundation walls, waiting to be sorted, salvaged, or eventually burned.
The major part of the barn was already there when my father-in-law's family bought the place over a century ago. I admired the hand-hewn 10x10 oak timbers, hand-cut mortises and wooden pegs that held the structure together for about 125 years. Even after my father-in-law retired from active farming, that structure continued to perform most of its original purpose as my nephew worked his farm. I wonder if the original builders, in some afterlife, know that the product of their efforts continued to serve well after they were gone. I wish I could say that of the things I design and build.
Last fall a squall line moved across a quarter of the continent, spawned tornadoes from Missouri to Michigan, and found a rotted joint in one of the main corner posts. Even with one corner unsupported the barn stood through the winter, though everybody knew there wasn't enough money to do a proper repair - and no compelling reason to do so even if funds were available. A couple of local Amish families were hired to dismantle the structure. It seems fitting and respectful that horses supplied most of the force and energy needed to bring the barn down.
With the debris and refuse collected within the foundation walls there aren't even reference points that memories can be pinned to. Where was that rickety ladder leading to the hay mow? The rope swing hung from a rafter? The corner where the beds were made when they slept there on a summer night? The mazes they constructed by stacking and arranging hay bales? What would the barn swallows do when they returned in a few weeks? Unlike my wife and her siblings, I didn't grow up there. Even so, I looked at the pile of electrical wire and fixtures and wondered which of it I was working on with her dad when I asked permission to marry his oldest daughter. And how many from the family had made love there amid the sounds and smells of cows, hay, and feed, as my wife and I had.
Now the primary visual feature of the farmstead is gone. On Sunday my wife and I walked back to the woodlot. When I turned around to head back home . . . it seemed like there was no home to head to. No reference point to steer toward. Only after walking to the first gentle rise could we see the house and yard across the field. Only after it was gone did I appreciate the many ways the old barn had touched and affected our lives.
Dale
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