There Is Not More of Wonder: ...Than a Firefly's Playful Flickering in a Child's Cupped Hands

By Thomas Paul Fondy

These verses and stories celebrate and reverence the majestic beauty of our shared humanity; our common sisterhood and brotherhood that bonds us to each other and to a thousand generations gone before. "We are joined from the dust of heaven, borne on the cosmic breeze. We raise our chorus to the cradle of life, set our music upon starry seas." "We celebrate the pulse of life, unbroken beat, shared by all, though we never meet. Echoes from the dawn of time. Singing to the yet to be."

Even while celebrating the majesty of being human, we can have no illusions about the heartless ferocity of which we are sometimes capable, when we fail to love one another and to honor the human dignity that the majesty of our shared origins demands for all of us. In the Great Fire Death of 1939 to 1945 this book poses the question meant to reverberate for a thousand years: What was it like when the rampaging mindless pathogen was not the Black Death and Yersinia pestis, but the Fire Death and Homo sapiensia pestis?

We remember the joys of days that once we shared with the friends of the long-gone then, who oh so briefly life anew. We shed a tear for children who never came to be because of young people who lost their lives or their loves in war: "Those never held in times embrace, time cannot forget, nor all of time together their precious like beget, the spirits of children of lovers never met."

We can come to understand that we are the miracle of creation: a creature who can touch past time, can sing, can care. We can come to know: the mystery past power of words alone, what wonders are we all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Feb 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466977112

Thomas Paul Fondy

Thomas Paul Fondy is a child from the years of the Second World War: a world of block-buster bombs, cities ablaze from incendiaries, 50 million deaths, racial, ethnic, and religious genocide, goose-stepping depravity, and finally the nuclear holocaust. From that nightmare when the future of civilization was in doubt has emerged our Millennial world where humans walk on the Moon. These verses celebrate that 70-year sojourn from darkness to a limitless future.

Book preview

There Is Not More

of Wonder …

Than a firefly’s playful flickering

in a child’s cupped hands

Verses and stories …

to keep the candles aglow

By: Thomas Paul Fondy

© Copyright 2013, 2014 Thomas Paul Fondy.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or

otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Created in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-7710-5 (sc)

            978-1-4669-7711-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013901174

Trafford rev. 12/02/2014

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Contents

Reflections

Who Is My Sister?

The Story of the Oakwood Children

The Silent Song of the Oakwood Children

The Story of Wooden Crosses and the Single Interment Cards

Wooden Crosses for Maria Sofia and Violanda

Day Baby Photos

The Baby of a Single Day

About Jurassic Park, 2001

Jurassic Park, 2001

Aria by a Tone-Deaf Bellini

The Minuet of Life

The Human Miracle

There Is Not More of Wonder

Where God Talks Came From

Revelation to a Scientist

The View from the Mountain Trail

Whispers from the Earth

Our Dawn Mother’s Song

Couplets to Creation

Of Time and Meaning

Of the Memorial Service for Ruth Britton,

and for Ourselves

The Breath of Galaxies

About Willem Prins and Willem’s Way

Willem’s Way

The Stars Remember

The Onrushing of the Hours

The Grace of a Loving Moment

The Endless Mirrors

Thoughts on Our Millennium Ending

To Our Millennium Ending

Ocean Whispers from Sandy:

Memories from World War II, September 11, 2001, and of the Iraq War

Manila American Cemetery and Memorial

The Story of Goodnight, Kilroy

Goodnight, Kilroy

The Fire Death of 1939 to 1945; To Remember for a Thousand Years

The Bomb from Ladder Company Six

Osama, the Scourge of the Mighty Bear

A Lifetime of Thoughts on the Mystic Harp

American Cemetery, Omaha Beach, Normandy 10,000 Markers

Memories on the Mystic Harp

Remembrances of Bernadette, Al, and of Our Mother

The Story of Benedetta and Bertha and Bernadette

A Lullaby for Our Mothers

A Lullaby for My Mother

Una Ninna Nanna per Mia Madre

The Story of a Father, of April 29 and 30, 1945,

and the First Communion of a Little Boy

About Judelle and the Noontime Runners and about Al Fondy

A Brother’s Good-bye

Two Brothers Awoke a Sleeping Newborn

A Sister’s Song

Thoughts of Chris, Lynn, Susan, and Kari Lynn

On Christmas Eve, 2001

To the Elm and the Oak

A Rocking Horse to the Autumn Star

A Rocking Horse to the Autumn Star

The Story of Kari, Ariel, and the Playing Wind

The Playing Wind

Joys Remembered of Days That Once We Shared:To the Friends of Yesterday

The Story of the Boys from the April Woods

The Boys from the April Woods

The Lamps of Heaven

Memories in the Evening

About the Brittany Spaniel and Lost in Barry Park

Lost in Barry Park

The Bunny-Hopping Line

Dreams Remembered of Days That Never Were

On the Wings of the Monarch Butterfly

Dream Children

On Tiny Flightless Wings

To Karen Jeanne

Easter Morning at Palomar Cathedral

A Wedding of One

Of Dreams That Came to Be—Songs for Sandy

The Story of the Flower Children

The Flower Children

The Bunny Nest

To Sandy, at the End of Our Millennium

To Snow Bunny

Melody from Heaven

These verses and their stories

celebrate what it is that makes us human:

That we can touch, move,

love one another,

and be loved,

even if we pass in only a few hours,

even if we live centuries apart.

We can wish for all of us:

A world where beauty lasts forever.

Where joys remembered rekindle,

And sadness recedes forgotten.

Where morning is forever,

A chorus of a thousand birds

Renews the endless dawn.

Reflections

Shining our candles in the Endless Mirrors that reflect forever down the halls of time.

The exquisitely beautiful creatures around us can feel for each other and for other living things just as we do, but their feeling and caring are only in their own lives, only in the world that they are part of or that they themselves have seen. The world of the distant past is unknown to all but us. Only we are merry in the playground of the past. Only we live in the world of tomorrow. Only we are benighted with foresight.¹

For us there is something even more moving than that special empathy among sentient creatures: "that we can touch, move, love another, and be loved, even if we pass in a few hours, even if we live centuries apart.2 We are a creature benighted with foresight, but merry in the playground of the past. We wish for each other timeless tomorrows where none of us disappears behind the veil of forgetfulness."¹

These verses and the stories that engendered them are, not only meant at once to celebrate and to reverence the majestic beauty of our humanness at its best, but also to acknowledge the depravity and perversity of which we are sometimes capable.

The Silent Song of the Oakwood Children is a time-bridged dialog with a summer’s child, Rachel Amelia Cody, who lived and died in the summer of 1840. Now we know and treat and seldom do we suffer death