Donald L. Beegle

Memphis, TN, USA

I am a long time resident of Memphis, Tennessee. I served as a machinist's mate a board U.S.S. Enterprise CV(N)65 from January 19765 to January 1967. I graduated cum laude in 1973 from Memphis State University. My degree is A B.B.A. in Business Management. Since that time I have worked in Memphis for several firms in Inventory management, sales forecasting, and similar positions in sales support. By the spring of 1989, I was ready for an attempt to change my career by returning to the ranks of college students and do as I did before, employed in the maintenance department. A broken heel followed by a stroke seemed to close all doors. It was not until last summer that I again become an avid reader and among the books I read were several books of poetry.

WILL OR CHANCE?

Is one's will able to create opportunity?
Can any person be so smart,
So taught and so in control to make their destiny?
A wonderful prospect but can it be true?

I think not. Rather, opportunity is more a random chance with
no one ever in complete control.
A chance, an opportunity passes
by us all and only some are
at the right place to know how
or may be when to flag it down.

How often is a person's career
far removed from their training?
The folly of youth, may it not
be any more than a rude comparison
with the experience of age?
And how can either be sure
which is right until youth becomes aged?

SPRING

Hope we've been told was all that
remained once pandora's box open
and it must be some relation of
that hope which makes each
generation seek out spring,
that surely the dank cold days
of winter can certainly not last.

The hillside alive and green will
see sheep again and the farmer
hard at work in his field again.
The warmth of the sun shall warm
our faces, our arms, our hearts again.

The season reflects mankind's greater being!
His, if only secret, desire
for the new to replace the gloom
of winter as hope will have us do.

A DISTANT SHORE

Everyone knew something or was it
nothing and only professed exact
knowledge to quell their own fears?
They were certain a hidden truth was real.
These valiant few, like fighting men since recorded
history; that they, tomorrow maybe,
would land and fight so they, their cause would triumph.
Oh, if they had known the distant shore's name was Galipoli!