Thank you for the encouragement, Robert. I find that even on Medium — which I consider one with a greater percentage of intelligent & caring individuals than most groups, negative criticism is often more prevalent than positive & thoughtful critique and nurturing of other perspectives and attempts to share. (Or perhaps that view is only a reflection of my own failings in perspective.)

No matter, I appreciate your words, though you are probably too kind. I’d term the piece ‘rhyming verse’, rather than that most inspirational, moving & effectively emotive formation of words we know as ‘poetry’.

To pen true poetry is a desire I’ve held for several decades yet never achieved. Fortunately, I have the work of many others far more gifted than I, to salve my frustration at not being able to approach, far less achieve what they have. (Wilfred Owen, William Blake, Leonard Cohen, Ted Hughes, Rupi Kaur, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath … and etc.)

None-the-less, whether reading the masterly & profound or writing the stumbling, flawed and clumsy comment that I do, I feel myself enriched & somehow always to have learned, even though I may not be able to articulate what significant fragment of meaning has attached itself to that central yet ephemeral entity that constitutes my being.