In third grade, Dane held a guitar like morning light,
And sang old mountains through a classroom door.
A boy with questions hidden out of sight,
Already felt the world was asking more.
He watched the grown-ups smile through private rain,
And learned that silence had a human face.
He named no wound, but carried half its pain,
Then offered others tenderness and space.
Teenage years came dressed in doubt and fire,
With music keeping time beside his bed.
He chased approval, hunger, hope, desire,
And feared the words that people left unsaid.
He laughed too loud when loneliness drew near,
Then called it wisdom just to seem less weak.
But every joke concealed a sharper fear,
That love might leave the moment he would speak.
At school he studied why the heart defends,
Why reason bends when ego wants the throne.
He read of minds, of truth, of means and ends,
Yet found no book could save a man alone.
Philosophy gave names to restless nights,
Psychology gave mirrors to his scars.
He learned that pride can counterfeit as rights,
And wounded children steer adult-like cars.
In young adulthood, Dane mistook his ache
For proof that closeness must be tightly held.
He loved as though one absence meant a break,
And every pause became a sentence spelled.
An anxious thread ran burning through his chest,
While calmer voices told him not to chase.
He tried to hold what needed room to rest,
And saw his need reflected in her face.
Yet empathy would stop him at the line,
Where love becomes a cage with holy art.
He learned her freedom was not less than mine,
And mercy must protect another heart.
He worked, he failed, he stood, he fell again,
Paid bills, wrote poems, swallowed private shame.
He watched ambition masquerade as Zen,
Then saw humility outlive the game.
His strengths were not the absence of a flaw,
But how he turned to face what made him small.
He found that truth was not a perfect law,
But courage answering the inward call.
Later, with dimmer eyes and clearer sight,
He met the God he could not fit in thought.
Not thunder only, but a patient light,
That found him most when certainty was not.
The Bible did not end his need to know,
But taught his restless mind to kneel and breathe.
A seed must vanish somewhere dark to grow,
And peace may come through what we cannot seize.
So Dane still walks where old attachments stir,
Still flinches when affection feels delayed.
But names the fear before it speaks for her,
And lets compassion interrupt the blade.
He writes because the soul must testify,
That frailty is not failure, only clay.
He asks if meaning waits beyond the sky,
Or if it forms in how we live today.
And when the final page begins to bend,
Will Dane find home, or one more road to roam?
Is God the answer waiting at the end,
Or just the voice still calling Dane toward home?

…

DCG