"Every year for decades, around this time of year I quietly look back on life's meanderings.   This year is especially reflective, it's getting harder to see coal to forge and the hand fails to strike word without trembling reminder the sands of time were not part of the immortal bargain."   "...For that I am sorry."   "The blacksmith and the artist, Reflect it in their art, They forge their creativity Closer to the heart."           "So many things I would tell you, so many things I cannot; one day the forge fires will fade, hand no longer to brush- touch the things I have made and remember my voice, know where my heart came and where it stayed. My peasant hands brought from me the words I cannot always say in what you see, and my touch in what you hold."                                                                                       ...

Happy Birthday to my little man Talon. Youre getting so big.     "Your (middle) proper name, Hunter, means you are in good company; Ullr, Skadi. Your mother, unbeknownst to memory carries Diana, bound to the sea and father guardian, Fenir."   "There is always a path taken without forethought as the hunter relies on his instincts and blood-memory to see his arrow home. Rely on these my son and no forest, earth, or water can tire you, no burden too heavy to bear. You will find Ullestad when heart call. This I promise you."   "Cast an arrow across the chasm and find your broken dog of an old man still chained to his rock. Listen to the howls of his rage at the bond of Gleipnir and the sorrows felt because of fate given task. He sees your mother in the night sky and laments it holding her...

Dawn breaks with knowing for the first time in my life, the possibility of never- the small hope that I have wanes with each day, how long before that is even enough to sway gentle breeze to touch brow and lift down cast eye.   Shoulders tremble because the weight they bear that at one time seemed effortless now calls to see knee bent and palm to ground. Song in heart seems distant and wave breaks on a shore I'm bound to rest.   One day I hope to hear it call my name and bring me home once again. Until then, I set to its water my small light carrying heart as beacon so that she knows the way. I can do nothing more and hope that in time the ground on which I lay etches memory of my presence once carried and reads: "I was always here and...