Today is my wife’s birthday.
She and I have known each other for a long time, and for a long time I have been trying to put my feelings for her into words. Over the years I have written well-intended words to her (some better than others), but most of them really didn’t convey my true feelings; they failed to speak me about her.

Recently I found some words that someone else wrote decades ago. They were written in reference to someone other than my wife, but they struck me as better words to speak me about her than words I had ever put together. So I figured, why not use their wonderful words; they have been around a long time, they are well known, they sound good, and best of all they really do speak me about her.

You Are My Sunshine
my only sunshine.
You make me happy
when skies are grey.
You'll never know, dear,
how much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away.


You Are My Sunshine ® 1940 and 1977 by Peer International Corporation
Written by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell

A friend of mine is getting married; I wrote this for her in order to get out of having to buy an expensive gift.


You must

You two must fly for all the ages

You mustn't simply try or take a stab or give it your fair shake

You must set your sights high and
run your race together and later
tell your young your glorious tales

You must never give up the course
because it is your course

You think of flight and you dream of
birds or planes or spirits or
of all the air above you now

You must however reach and think of more

You must also think in terms of time

You must recall the giants that flew
the skies before you that were
the masters of what you two must
now combine to do

You must lose your fetters and become
the sky

You seldom hear “fly like the dinosaurs” for it seems odd and out of place
yet among those stunning tenants of our world gone by flew kings
they slipped between the ground and God
they were neither bird
nor brute
nor monster
they were graceful gracious and gaunt
they were the biggest beings aloft
they owned their planet
as must you

You two must scale the stars and stay aloft

You must fill the air with
your desire
your portents
your surprise
your laughter and
your own blend of yourselves

You two together must take this charge

You must never give in
never give in
never

The White and the Black

Two worlds make two cultures
that make two countries
that make two people

You and I are those two people
for all that has gone on in our worlds before us
we are now as different as we can be

Yet if you scrape that pallid skin of difference from us
set its essence aside
then we are the same
we are kin

Today as two bulls - one white one black
fret and prance and set their stage for war
we say they are different
but not to a blind bull

For as long as it is necessary
may we all be just a bit blind

For it is often only in our blindness
that we can clearly see into our precious little world

COPYRIGHT © 2003 - Richard Anderson


Richard Anderson
17 March 2003
Kuala Lumpur

I have been to five score cities around the world; Paris will remain for me the one.