Winds of Change: Blown to Life by Those Who Dare

The following pieces of poetry have a story that leaves me, the writer, somewhat at a loss to explain. I hated poetry, probably because of my earlier contact with it. On October the ninth, 1968, an overwhelming urge took me and I pulled a pen out of my pocket and wrote the first piece I ever attempted. The words flowed without effort and I completed the poem in less than ten minutes. I really can't explain how or why it happened, nor did I fully understand what I wrote. Re-reading the poem, I gradually began to understand it. With study, I saw that it was an instruction to me to help achieve the beginnings of peace of mind. Every other day another forced its way into my conscious and I was compelled to write it down. On the twenty-fifth of October, 1968, the final poem of the first group came to me, with it, a decision to leave the land of my birth and run away from all things that I was enmeshed in. For almost one year I lived abroad in self-exile. After a little more than a month away from home, these poems ceased coming. Not until I returned and began to fight for the things I hold of value, did they return. These messages, which they truly are to me, may be of some value to you in helping find your way though the maze of life.