Immortality of the past - and old Marine poem

This morning a friend messaged me saying "I was going through an old photo album and found this..."

I had friended Brian after mistaking him for a high school buddy. He and I have never actually met in person, but have been FB friends for several years. We were both in the Marines about the same time, but unlike me, he went on to a career in Force Recon, while I was an admin before being put out on a medical. He's helped me with technical details in some of my books.

The image is a photocopy of a poem I wrote in 1988, as a 19-year-old private while in a medical rehab platoon recovering from two broken ankles. One of the Drill Instructors liked it and let me make a couple photocopies in our office, one of which he kept, the other was framed and hung in our barracks. Apparently, it got out from there because somehow it ended up in Brian's photo-album.

Amazing how something we said or did decades ago can pop up again years later. Makes me think of the effect our daily, often unthinking actions can have even decades later for those whom we contact, even those we don't realize we've touched.

Semper Fidelis.

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