With your patient, dark eyes and thick hair haloing 'round;
Deft fingers strumming music of a sweet, haunting sound;
Your casual, jean-clad stride; broad-shouldered and tall,
You slow and sit and seek opinions of us all.

A phantom acquiesence masks your searching face,
It's clear there are more stages in your relentless chase,
Something in you churns, questing for the truth;
Answers sought in thought, energized by youth.

Where are you going and what will you do?
Searing questions of the young now plague you.
An issue discussed here; a book pondered there;
Then you shoulder your guitar to test other atmosphere.

You're untempered yet by life, refusing to be bound
By strictures of society until the clues are found.
Weighing God's creative power, you shake your head in sorrow
Over lives destroyed in war and what may come tomorrow.

Spurning hours at class, disdaining the decree
Of suited, short-haired men, authoritarian and fifty.
But wisdom has no birthday, and will later stake a claim;
Its smoldering spirit will glow with a sure, bold flame.

Then it will reveal your goal was sought before;
That others studied flowers, envisioned a star's core.
We watch your demanding fist hammer on life's doors,
Your striving, sifting, soaring becomes a gift of ours.