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Dedicated to Dr. Donald Maynard

Darkness enshrouds my search
Seeking wisdom in my plight
Searching for the freedom not yet realized

Looking to your steady hand for my salvation
Resting my fears in your determination
Deriving the strength I need, from your sincerity

Your guidance, your leadership, shoring up my resolve
Your kindness, your gratitude, your diligence
Allows me to succeed, where I have only failed before

Your actions have set me free,
Allowing me to see possibilities I never knew existed
Your profession, one of giving others their dreams

Your steady nerve, guiding me along this path
Mending physically what was broken on a mental plain
Something special comes from your resolve

This gift you have given me
This new lease on my health
This new chapter in my life
Life without regrets
Life without remorse
Life without Obesity

ERIC SKAGGS 10/05

 

The Master

Feelings, like a pallet of color in the hand of a master artist Warming, mixing together, melting one into another

Brilliantly showing the others wonder
As the master swirls his finger through the mix Converging and intertwining the other

What a site to behold, the brightness, the beauty As the colors swirl and twirl one with another The master distracted at their beauty

Lost in thought, he continues
Until once he comes back to reality only to find The grays, left behind

Not sure what to do, he stares at the mess he has created Unable to make a masterpiece with a dismal pallet Disgusted with himself, he becomes enraged

In his anger within himself
He slings the pallet across the room
He watches as the wood hits the wall

The paints slide off the pallet with such ease, such force Splattering against the wall His artistic eye picks up the forms and shapes left behind

He then realizes, he did create, created something unexpected The shapes taking form on that distant wall Shifting, changing as it slides down the wall

Seeing something new and unexpected appearing before him Not sure what to do, intent to just stare once again To drift and to wonder To see only what the maker sees in his creation

ERIC SKAGGS 6/5/05

 

Reflecting on the past, looking at your future....
can you see the present?

Eric Skaggs 2005

Here I lay
Forty just won't go away

Stars in the night sky
Bringing tears to my eyes

Twenty years ago I lay
And stare at those stars
As if it were today

Except, my time lay me unknown
Now history is a thing of the past
Not something yet to be, Unmasked

I want to reach back across time
To that night under the stars that shine
Explain the pain to avoid

To dream and decide
Take chances and be alive
To be fearless yet wise

Reaching forward from the stars that night
I like to think I would NOT look for answers
From what IS to be
Only to gain understanding of what it takes to be happy

Back at forty though
I know that there is no such show

That the moment I laid on the hood of that old truck
Staring my future in the face
Was the moment my history was being written
You learn from your past
So you can deal with your future
Hoping you survive your present