**** Happy Birthday, BEB. I love you with all of my heart.

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Sometimes I sit and I try to wordle my words into a poem of my own, and sometimes I try to learn about new poets and then read and share some of their offerings. A British poet, named Benjamin Zephaniah passed away this month of a brain tumor at the age of 65. He was quite famous in the United Kingdom and he wrote poems for adults and children alike. I only learned about him because someone on X, posted a long, thoughtful letter which he had written back to her. This poster of the letter (Jess Green, @jessgreenpoet) enjoyed writing to her favorite authors, when she was a child, and she said that he was one of the few writers that ever wrote back. This is the letter that he wrote back to her:

I feel like I know Benjamin from just reading this letter, don’t you? I still have a hard time believing that Artificial Intelligence will be able to mimic “the voice”, of a heartfelt, genuine, authentic letter. Below is one of Benjamin Zephaniah’s poems. This short, direct poem struck me as a reminder of how much has changed since I was a child. We can argue that some of the changes that have happened over the years in society are puzzling, and questionable, but many, many of these changes have been good, and productive, and have moved the world forward. To change the world, we must change minds.

Who’s Who

I used to think nurses
Were women,
I used to think police
Were men,
I used to think poets
Were boring,
Until I became one of them.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.