It was in late November 2022, the season of Thanksgiving. I was awakened in the predawn darkness by the words of a poem. I got out of bed, found a pen and paper and began to record what was coming to me. It turned out to be more like
a limerick than poetry. I shared it with our pastor. He invited me to read it to the congregation on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Everyone seemed to be
smiling and enjoying the humorous tale of a “guitar pickin’ boy down in New Orleans.”
Upon first reading, the poem entitled SHOES, it may seem to be nothing more than a simple limerick, a whimsical, humorous jingle that makes us smile. When it’s sung it make us laugh. And the world we live in these days can use more good-hearted laughter.  But upon closer examination, if we dig a little deeper, examine it line by line,  stanza by stanza, we uncover a story with a more thought-provoking message to be found.
This book then has been organized in a format enabling the reader to engage with the poem and the story simultaneously and experience the transition of a poem, a silly limerick, into a compelling human interest story.