When I read stories,
I remember every cancer patient,
Whose hand I held in hospice,
While I read to them.
Every child,
I read or told a story too,
With all their hopes,
and their skinned knees,
Their fall downs,
All their clever questions,
and skeptical comments.
Also my own parents,
My aunts, uncles,
and grandparents.
My older brother,
And all of my cousins,
Who were so kind to me.
When I was a child,
and who still are.
And, all the animals,
Who have been such good companions, to me.
The animals hunger, thirst, suffer, feel the cold,
Endure and flee the storms,
and many of the social mammals,
have all our own emotional range,
And sometimes more.
They suffer, as we do.
If I cry, when I read,
It is for them,
Those Humans,
And those Animals.
And for the Sufferings felt by God,
All of their sufferings,
Their joys,
My memory of them,
My Love for all of them.
My hatred of their suffering.
I remember,
A Promise, is a Promise.

Rice and Beans,
And Cabbage,
Have always been good friends to me.
Onions, too,
And Garlic,
When I can get it.
But, in other company,
After theirs,
I can be noxious,
Loud in my reports.

https://www.youtube.com/w[...]PIP9KXdmO0

"Always Fart Proudly" - Benjamin Franklin, aka Poor Richard.

"Never trust a fart" - your humble narrator, from sad experience.