Gone From My Sight
by B. Karnes, RN

I am standing on the seashore.

A ship at my side spread her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.  She is an object of beauty and strength.  I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says:  "There, she is gone!"  Gone where?  Gone from my sight -- that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.  And just the moment when someone at my side says:  "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:  "Here she comes!"

IF
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Flight
by Craig Carnelia

Let me run thru a field in the night, let me lift from the ground ‘til my soul is in flight.
Let me sway like the shade of a tree, let me swirl like a cloud in a storm on the sea.

Wish me on my way thru the dawning day. I wanna flow, wanna rise, wanna spill, wanna
grow in a grove on the side of a hill.

I don’t care if the train runs late, if the checks don’t clear, if the house blows down.
I’ll be off where the weeds run wild, where the seeds fall far from this earth-bound town.

And I’ll start to soar. Watch me rain ‘til I pour. I’ll catch a ship that’ll sail me astray, get
caught in a wind I’ll just have to obey ‘til I’m flying away.

Let me leave behind all the clouds in my mind. I wanna wake without wondering why,
finding myself in a burst for the sky.

I’ll just roll. Let me lose all control. I wanna float like a wish in a well, free as the sound
of the sea in a shell.

I don’t know, but maybe I’m just a fool. I should keep to the ground. I should stay where
I’m at. Maybe ev’ryone has hunger like this, and the hunger will pass. But I can’t think
like that.

All I know is somewhere, thru a clearing, there’s a flickering of sunlight on a river long
and wide, and I have such a river inside.

Let me run thru a field in the night, let me lift from the ground ‘til my soul is in flight.
Let me sway like the shade of a tree, let me swirl like a cloud in a storm on the sea.

Wish me on my way thru the dawning day. I wanna flow, wanna rise, wanna spill, wanna
grow on the side of a hill, wanna shift like a wave rollin’ on, wanna drift from the path
I’ve been trav’ling upon, before I am gone.