The Wonder of It All

By Earl Fee

The Wonder of It All is a collection of rhymed and free verse poems by Earl Fee covering a wide range in five sections -Live, Love, Laugh, Pathos, and Spirit/ Spirituality. The 71 beautiful colored professional photos, carefully selected-support the theme and atmosphere of the 118 poems and assist to bring the poems to life. Many of these poems have an important message or story. These down-to-earth poems will help awaken and sharpen your senses of taste, sight, hearing and particularly feelings associated with the heart and spirit; and will increase appreciation of the nature all around you,- and increase your empathy for your fellow man. Every day can then become an Earth Day, instead of just one day a year-in appreciation and gratitude for our planet Earth and its nature. And then ideally, everyday becomes for you a People Day (my invention) -a great appreciation, love and empathy for our fellow man, leading to helping each other. Then you will truly be in awe of the wonder of it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jan 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466975880

Earl Fee

Earl Fee is a retired nuclear engineer consultant, motivational speaker on fitness, running, longevity and spirituality; poet, and also a runner with over 50 world record broken in the past 25 years. He has three books published since 2001: How to Be a Champion from 9 to 90, The Complete Guide to Running, and his latest 100 Years Young the Natural Way in three parts: Body, Mind and Spirit. See www.earlfee. com for details.

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© Copyright 2013 Earl Fee.

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.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4669-7589-7 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-7588-0 (e)

Trafford rev. 01/18/2013

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North America & international

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LIVE

The Trilliums

Drifting Clouds

Fleeting Dreams

Buried Dreams

Second Chances

Mount Pleasant Cemetery

The Danger of Deprecating the Disadvantaged

Not Yet Lord

Night Storm

God Has Smiled On You Today

Last Drink With Grandad

A Special Friend

A Retirees Prayer of Survival

A Whale of a Home

Advice to a Son and Daughter

Oh Blasted Wind

The Last Toot

Last Ride to Somewhere

Vietnam Serenade

Date in New York City

The Fisherman and His Last Catch

The Last Lap

The Karate Chop

Misery Likes Company

Fraternity

Work, Work, Work as a Boy

The Iditarod

No Rockin’ Chariot for Me

The Why and the Wherefore

A Walk with Winter

Take Me Back to Wild Calgary

Cowboy’s Last Ride to Forever

Where Eagles Soar

The Heavenly Hymn

The Perfectionist

The Forever Dive

A Smile Pass It On

The Mighty Sauble Elm

Apache Boy versus the Desert

Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

High Rollers

Jet Streams and Dreams

Happiness Is a Butterfly

Sharing the Forest Cathedral

The Wind Chimes

Candy Floss Trees

The Flower Lady in the Oasis

Childhood Memories of the West

Faces

The Awakening

Cherry Blossoms and Almond Eyes

The Bull Rider

The Swan

The Weeping Angel

Carefree Country

The Pitiful Composer

The White Wonder

The Maples of Port Elgin

Till the Last May You

LOVE

A Mother’s Love

Mummy

Down Happy Memory Lane

There Is No Tomorrow

The Flute that Will Not Die (The Taj Mahal)

Lovers Come and Lovers Go

A Kiss Is Not a Kiss Anymore

Whispering Winds

Never Over You

Lost Love

You and I

The Spring in My Life

We Love To Go A-Wandering

Sweet Memories Exceed Painful Longing

LAUGH

The Party

Philosophy in a Nutshell

Doggon Dog Story

Race to the Whirlpool Favourite Spot

Lucky Out of Love

Old Suckers Never Stop

Once In a Lovetime

Bad Hair Expressions

Calling All Big Sisters

Limericks

Count Drac’s Last Party

Let Us

PATHOS

No More No More

Bird in the House

Ill Be Home for Christmas

Tsunami

Fear

Ride With the Valkyries

Till We Meet Again

The Hanging

The Collisions that Shook the World

One Last Drink, One Last Laugh (The Titanic)

Dust in the Wind

The Fallen

SPIRIT & SPIRITUALITY

Rays of Heaven

Adversity Overcome

Stumble But Never Crumble

A Piece of Cake

The Unforgiving Battlefield

The Legend: Eric Liddell

Runners Prayer

Dig Deep

Useless Versus Useful

York Minster Cathedral

Magic Carpet Dreams

The Port of Opportunity

Be Bold Be Strong

God In Us

Running in Satori

End of the Trail

Rap, Rap, Rappin’ on Heaven’s Gate

INTRODUCTION

Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feelings, reviews the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and softest feeling and through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith [and hope] to lay hold on the future life.

William Ellery Channing

The above quotation is a good summary of the major advantages of reading and enjoying poetry. But I believe there is another important advantage—namely poetry can increase your spirituality by awakening the senses of taste, sight, hearing, and heart feelings. The aspect of spirituality I speak of is defined here as your loving, kind, compassionate actions in dealing with your fellow man, helping others, and making the world a better place by sharing your gifts with the world. It’s a feeling of benevolent identification with nature, all mankind and all forms of life. When you are more aware and appreciative of everything around you—your appreciation of nature increases, your empathy for your fellow man increases and your spirituality grows. This in turn leads to a greater quality of life. As one gets older spirituality can increase, but the mind and body deteriorate. There is a feeling that time is running out,—so each hour becomes more precious.

Poetry will help sharpen your sensory skills so that you are more aware of sights, even subtle sounds and aromas, and more attune to feelings of others. Aim to be enjoy each precious hour to the fullest extent. Aim to be like a Dr. Zhivago, the poet/physician/lover in the great movie of the same name. He was constantly aware and appreciative of his surroundings. But most people are not smelling the roses. They are seeing but not really seeing and appreciating. They are wearing blinkers. It’s like hearing but not listening to your spouse. A good example of wearing the blinkers was In the Globe and Mail recently, where: a writer extols the advantages of living in the far north in Canada. She mentioned the crisp air, the great meals at the neighbours and the spring flowers, but no mention of the Northern lights, sunsets and sunrises, the beautiful surroundings, the different sounds or silence, or the awesome and plentiful stars that are missing in our cities due to smog and glare.

Take off the blinkers. By greater appreciation of nature and your fellow man you become a poet yourself. George Sand states: He who draws delights from the sentiment of poetry is a true poet, though he has never even written a line in all his life.

Finally, you may wonder why the title; The Wonder of It All? Any day that we do not hear the voices of our 14 billion year old still evolving universe: revel in a vibrant golden sunrise or a soul stirring sunset, the magic clouds and a clear blue sky, or an awesome starry night; appreciate a walk in nature, or appreciate our fellow man and creatures; is a wasted day. Our lives are too outwardly materialistically oriented, whereas they should be more inwardly spiritually sensitive.

In my city I sadly miss the nightly display of our universe. In the county this spectacle so available each night in the crisp clear air—is normally taken for granted. We need to be more appreciative of the 100 billion galaxies and roughly 100 billion stars in each galaxy and with some stars so monstrous that it would take a jet plane about 1100 years to travel around them. Hence, it is impossible that we are alone in the universe. Recent research by astronomers reveals the universe is no doubt teeming with trillions of worlds like our own. We need to be forever grateful to be a finite part of our infinite, mind boggling, universe that defies description. Therefore, hopefully these few words will be food for thought—and these meager offerings of poems and impressive professional photos will awaken some spiritual appreciation and gratitude for the wonder of it all.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I give thanks to my good friend Wayne Cosgrove, poet, who started me on my poetry writing in the 1990’s by inviting me to his poetry parties where everyone had to bring their meagre offerings. One of my poems, The Flower Lady in the Oasis, was inspired by his own fine poem on this subject—and another one was inspired by one of his personal quotations: Lovers come and go, but friendship goes on forever.

The many professional photos used from Canstockphoto, and a few from iStockphoto including the great cover photo are gratefully acknowledged.

The action photo of me in the 200 meter hurdles—a world record in Puerto Rico, September 2010 at age 81—by professional photographer Francesco Paquito Lopez" is gratefully acknowledged. See poem Old Suckers Never Stop in the Laugh section.

Used here are two impressive expressionist paintings in acrylic—painted by my late brother Maurice Fee. These and over 130 others were bequeathed to me. The two here are, the Laugh title page (The Clown), and in the Live section with the poem Faces (Melancholy). As always I am greatly appreciative of these remarkable paintings making me feel grateful and wealthy.

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LIVE

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The Trilliums

It’s early May and heaven on earth

It seems, as I tread the forest path

So still and fresh. My heart is filled with mirth

For in spring how could one have wrath?

Beside me a stream shines and whispers;

While on the forest floor an ocean

Of white trilliums perform their vespers

With velvet throats raised in devotion,

To sing silent amens one and all

To their deceased neighbours the brown leaves;

Above, silver columns form nature’s cathedral

With a new roof of green and lacy weaves.

To make my day complete a cardinal

In suit of blazing red comes to greet

Farewell! Come again! I know I shall,

As refreshed I emerge to the hot street.

But will the trilliums still be there?

In life there are too many farewells I swear.

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Drifting Clouds

White drifting clouds slowly traverse the sky,

Blessed by the golden sun smiling on high,

Likewise our sorrows will take flight and fly

To another world to disappear and die.