Men go forth to wonder at the height of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the ocean, the course of the stars-and forget to wonder at themselves.
- St. Augustine
I was born in the small town of Coffeeville, Mississippi in 1940. I was raised on a farm nearby. My mother abandoned me when I was three. (I was later able to have a relationship, although sometimes stormy, with her through most of my life.) When I was five my father was killed in action at Okinawa during World War II. Fortunately, I had two wonderful grandparents that became my guardians and raised me to be the person that I became. Although neither attended school beyond the eighth grade, both honored education and are the main reason I attended college and graduated as an engineer. I may have missed some of the advantages that younger parents might have provided; but I was well schooled in the things that truly matter – hard work, individual responsibility, honesty, love, faith, patience, commitment, and perseverance. I always knew that I was loved and had the benefit of a stable home throughout my formative years.
Nevertheless, I always had a wanderlust about me and a craving to head off in search of my father whose body was never recovered. I would dream that he was still alive in the jungles of Okinawa, and that I could find him. This fascination turned to space once Collier’s magazine published Dr. Werner von Braun’s articles on space and going to the moon between 1952 and 1954. I spent many nights staring into the sky observing the billions of stars visible from the Mississippi countryside. After the Collier’s articles and numerous conversations with my uncle Charlie, a career U.S. Air Force flight engineer, I was convinced that we were going to the moon and I would be part of it. In 1964 that dream was realized when I joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Apollo Program. It was not only my job, but I had embarked on the greatest adventure of my life. The poem The Greatest Adventure is my tribute to that spectacular event. It remains the period of my life of which I am most proud.
This anthology is a collection of poems motivated by personal life experiences. I have organized it around nine topics: youth, adventure, love, seasons, change, hope, places and things, farewells, and prayer. Most were written in the mid-1990s during times when I was separated from my family by work requirements on a project of important national significance. Those times separated gave me the opportunity to think more deeply about many important events, activities, and circumstances of my life. The result is this collection of poems and writings. Some topics only have one entry; others may have several.
I begin with Youth, which starts with Life on the Creek. The freedom to spend countless hours fishing, exploring, and observing the nearby creek and its ecosystem during my youth was a major molder of who I became. In Life on the Creek I try to provide some idea of what it was like through the eyes of a young boy. Walking on a Moonbeam, the namesake for this anthology, captures the wonder and dreams of a young boy captivated by the moon in the 1950’s. Which Way Dad? was motivated by an exchange between father and son that I observed while sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Colorado Springs, CO. It brought back memories of my own fatherless childhood, and reminded me of my own struggles in growing up without the kind of guidance my father might have provided.
The Greatest Adventure is my longest poem and is drawn from the central accomplishment of my career as an engineer. It is written from the perspective of those engineers, scientists, and technicians who stayed behind to the astronauts that made those first trips to explore the moon. The poem gives a young working engineer’s perspective on putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. I believe it represents the views of many of the younger guys in the trenches at the time that made the moon landing and safe return successful. In my view, this event represents mankind’s greatest adventure of all time; although I suspect that Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, and a few Vikings would argue that point. For those of us involved it was the greatest thrill imaginable.
The section on Love focuses on love and being apart. It contains four poems. They were all written during the two years that I was often separated from my loved one by work requirements. In When I am Gone I am telling her how I hope she will feel and act during the times that I am away. It also may be valid on other levels. In When We Are Apart I am telling her how I feel when I am away from her for extended periods. Leaving You talks about how it feels to be leaving my loved one for extended time, particularly when things are not quite right between us. Coming Home tells how I feel about coming home to her after extended time apart.
Most of life has a natural rhythm of seasons whether we speak of the earth’s weather patterns or the natural seasons of life experienced by man. The section on Seasons includes four poems - one for each of the Earth’s environmental seasons. Three of the four were inspired by the seasons of Colorado Springs, Colorado, although they apply to most areas of the country. The fourth, Summertime, was written after I returned home to the hot summers of Huntsville, Alabama. While there is a strong focus on the Earth seasons in most of these poems, all have overtones of the seasons of a man’s life - some more than others.
Change is a constant in life. How we deal with big change is a primary determiner of the quality of our lives. The Change section has three poems. Since I was a teenager, I had dreamed of being an engineering expert that traveled the country solving problems. One day I was on my way home from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where I had been working on just such a problem for national defense when I suddenly realized that I had fully achieved my dream, but it wasn’t enough, and my youth was gone. O’ Youth! Why Must You Go? was penned on the airplane on my way home that day. Eventually I let it go and moved on to some of the most successful and enjoyable years of my engineering career. I had let my focus on the dream blind me to other important opportunities that allowed me to grow both personally and professionally. Questions in Paradise is my reaction to having to leave my home of 30 years and move to Colorado Springs for an important national defense project. I mulled this over in my mine for many hours wrestling with the decision. My wife did not want to move. The work was interesting and important. Ultimately, I accepted the challenge by taking a two-year temporary assignment. Had I not taken this assignment, this book of poems would not exist. When my wife became seriously ill, Don’t Leave Me Alone was my plea for her to not leave me alone in my sorrow. She subsequently recovered and we returned to a normal life. All three change events had potentially gut-wrenching consequences. In each case I eventually dealt with them and moved on to a fuller and stronger life. To me the penning of these three poems was an important part of dealing with these events.
The Hope section has one poem. Hope Renewed was motivated by an encounter with an elderly lady at the museum in the now gambling town of Cripple Creek, Colorado. It tells the story of a town’s hope for the return to its past glory as a gold mining town. In many ways, it is representative of the hopes and dreams of many throughout the country who instead of embracing the future long for a return to the past.
Two poems are in a category called Places and Things. The first, Stonehenge, was motivated by a visit to Stonehenge in 1988. It is an expression of my sense of wonder in the presence of this mysterious and majestic sight. Sea Oats came about as the result of a trip with my wife, Beth, to Gulf Shores, Alabama for a political conference. It was motivated by my amazement at this small plant’s struggle to protect and preserve the Gulf beaches.
Appropriately, Farewells is included in this anthology. It has only one entry, Farewell My Brothers, but it says much about my thoughts on the subject. It was motivated by my feelings in saying good bye to my engineering team in Colorado Springs after two years of intense engineering activity. I had a great team. The work was of important national significance and very demanding. In telling the team farewell, I knew I would never see most of them again. This was a feeling I had experienced other times in the past in somewhat similar situations. Many will recognize the feeling. Difficult, but I knew the future always holds new and exciting endeavors and opportunities to create new brotherhoods.
Prayer is a very powerful force in many people’s lives, as it has been throughout my life and the lives of most people born and raised in the South. I have included this topic in the form of two prayers. The Blessing covers a Christian tradition - the blessing of the food or otherwise known as Giving Thanks or Saying Grace before meals. The second, My Daily Prayer, is a prayer of daily communication with God. Both are important Southern Christian traditions to which I was born and raised.