Hello Billy, Here’s the promised poem for your Friendship website..with some extremely helpful edits by Melissa…
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The winds of change are never a gentle breeze.
The tides of time are never still, never at ease.
The dominant destructive force in the Universe is entropy.
The dominant destructive force on Earth is enmity.
Some say the world may end in fire; some say it will freeze.
But those who want fire and those who want ice
Aren’t the ones we want to see rolling the dice.
We prefer those who believe that plenty and peace
May perhaps one day prevail…as then the rolling will cease.
After all, we’re brainy sentient women and men, not mice.
The antonym for enmity is friendship, not love or devotion.
The antidote for enmity is empathy, not some fleeting emotion.
For love can be blind, but empathy requires vision.
Love is an ephemeral feeling that can often foster division,
While empathy is cerebral, lasting, and deep as an ocean.
Enmity is a burning conflagration based on ignorance and primal fear.
Fear of people different and rejection of what should be clear.
Empathy is a natural mental skill that’s easily acquired.
It’s simple to learn because into our brains it’s genetically wired.
All it takes is a bit of practice…beginning with those who are near.
If our world is not to end in ice or in fire.
Or in something else equally extremely dire,
We must cooperate and collaborate on an international scale.
We all must learn to get along, half-hearted measures will never avail.
The choice is clear: peace and prosperity on Earth or a hellish quagmire.
OBT
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