Human beings, by our very nature, are territorial and possessive. We are always looking for something to call our own. This short story explores what it would be like to live our entire life without anything uniquely our own, to finally find something, only to have it taken from us.

And then, in an unexpected way, to have it returned.

Beauty, I think, is more readily recognized when you are happy. Why is that, I wonder? Does it perhaps suggest that way we see beauty as a reflection of the way we see ourselves?

I was happy when I wrote this poem. Buoyant, even. My best friend, Angela, and I had spent most of a weekend touring the California coast by car, playing tag with an ocean breeze along Pacific Coast Highway. We stopped frequently, strolling sandy beaches, climbing treacherous rocks, staring from high vistas into an horizon lost in summer's haze. I felt close to my friend, close to Nature as embodied in a near perfect climate, and very close to my God.

I penned these words near the end of our journey, sitting in quiet silence together atop a grassy prominence five hundred feet above the ocean's edge. For a too brief respite, I saw the entire world as beautiful. And every once in a while, I read again the words I wrote and for a heartbeat am able to recapture that glorious weekend of beauty.

I was still in high school when I wrote this poem, still a few years away from the need to shave, and half a world away from the fear of death. It was meant to be humorous, subtle, and maybe a bit sacrilegious. There are no great truths or insights in this poem, except maybe the need for friends to share their laughter.

Then again, maybe that's enough to justify its existence.

Friendships are built on many things, but war and common danger can often forge a bond stronger than family and more lasting than romance. You are forcibly brought very close together, for long periods, at a time in your life when you are most inclined to be honest and open (because you fear there won't be another time). People who share these things either learn to hate each other, or become uncommon friends.

Unfortunately, those are also the friends you are most likely to suddenly lose…

This poem was written for Angela, my closest friend for over five years, and given to her on her birthday. It was hard for me to imagine, at the time, a more perfect friend than she. And I thought it important to tell her so.

I've often wondered, since, whether the extended similes of this poem are significant. It seems that any time I write about friendship, and especially the friendship I shared with Angela, I find myself comparing it to Nature. But maybe that's not really so strange. Both are gifts of God we should learn to treasure.

Friendship can be a difficult concept to fully grasp, but I think that's largely because we don't put enough emphasis on its importance. We experience a lot of different relationships in our lives. But none, I think, are any more important than when two people come together as Best Friends.

This poem isn't about fireworks, BBQ's, or even the annual celebrations within any specific country. Freedom is important to everyone, in every country, but especially so I think to those who write. Without freedom, there is no poetry, no prose, no new words of Truth.

This is a very personal exploration of Freedom. Not everyone will agree with my conclusions, not everyone will agree that true Freedom comes only from within. And that disagreement is the way it should be. After all, that's what Freedom is all about.

An argument could be made that this poem is in the wrong category, that it is more of a Sad Poem than a Love Poem. After three of the most incredible years of my life, my second wife had just left me. There was no warning she was interested in another man, at least none I had been able to see. I was devastated.

In spite of those circumstances, this is not a Sad Poem. For, Annette returned to me. Did she return because of this poem (and the hundred others I wrote in the weeks we were apart)? Probably not. But this poem and the Truths it holds are a large part of the reason I was able to try again.

What do we really know about love? Absolutely nothing. And accepting that limitation is the first step towards accepting love.

This is an older poem, at least thirty years in my past, and it's certainly not one of my better crafted ones. And yet, in spite of its weaknesses, I think there are some important Truths hidden in its lines.

Is love an evolutionary process? My teenage self seemingly thought so when he penned these lines. And while he was much too young, with far too little experience in the joys and pains of love, I sometimes wonder if - just maybe - he enjoyed an insight I have since lost.

Is love an evolutionary process? And, if so, where does the end of growth lie?

There's not a lot to say about this poem. It's a very simple poem, written during a very simple time in my life. I was maybe eighteen, only recently married and very much in love. I think I saw life and love, during those simple years, as a road. And this poem represented the destination of that road, the place where love and faith would take me if I only continued the journey I had started.

I no longer see Life as a simple road, straight and narrow, but rather as a twisting series of decisions we either make or fail to make. And this poem no longer represents a destination signaling the end of our journey. The destination, instead, has become the vehicle in which we travel. Or, if you prefer, the environment we are travelling through.

My views have changed in thirty years. But the sentiments embodied in these words haven't. I still, at times, wish…