Laughing daffodils blow in the wind

Peaceful birds chirping the delights of Spring

And with them thoughts of you they bring

Sharing measles in the darkened bedroom at four and five

Climbing the fifty foot cedar trees

Seeing who could out do the other

Reaching the top …winging our way into the breeze

Feeling the freedom of our youth

Reenacting the adults and you played the priest

Giving out Stark candy wafers for communion

The Ghost Town in the neighbor’s woods was filled

With a bank, and saloon, and all the wild imaginings of our youth

Until the owner chased us out

And we laughed and laughed and returned as soon as he was out of sight!

Playing tag in the clover fields and again chased out

Onward we moved and out of the town

You into the service and me into college

Yet touched bases now and then

And I pleading with you to vacation with me

And you agreed and off we drove

Through the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where I thought my life would end

Bolstered by stone walls on either side, with the semi on our tail

The downward descent though the Appalachian mountain range

To the warm shores of the Atlantic shouldering Myrtle Beach

Eventually we returned to tiny St. Michaels

And again we parted company

You on to marriage, and me on to the convent

After my absence for five years, you opened your apartment to me

And again we struck up the conversation where we left off several years previous

Brother and sister always we will be

Your kind and generous heart will carry me

Now you have left this Earth, giving what you could of yourself

Now you have left this Earth, but not my heart