And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.
Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.
Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.
I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.
A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
I like to go wakeboarding. It's my new favorite sport. It's like skiing but on a snowboard that has little shoes on it.
Socrates was the chief saint of the Stoics throughout their history ; his attitude at the time of his trial, his refusal to escape, his calmness in the face of death , and his contention that the perpetrator of injustice injures himself more than his victim, all fitted in perfectly with Stoic teaching. So did his indifference to heat and cold, his plainness in matters of food and dress, and his complete independence of all bodily comforts.
I say get an education. Become an electrician, a mechanic, a doctor, a lawyer, anything but a fighter. In this trade, it's the managers that make the money and last the longest.
Invest your life in what you love.