Daniel Boone and possum tales, we sat wide-eyed and innocent, loving the yarns you'd spin on Sunday afternoons.

I love your gentle blue eyes and musky smell, earned through years of toil in fields of corn.

Stubborn as a bull, generous as the earth itself. You--a farmer, carpenter, singer, a storyteller--my "Pappa."

Always there with a kind word, you who have seen a century of changes, from horse-drawn carriages to shuttles bursting in space.

Oh how I wish you were immortal on earth. You could forever sit in your chair in the neat, white framed house, listening, watching, dreaming of Appalachian springs.

I'll forever sit at your feet, child at your knee. You who could do no wrong in my eyes--oh "Pappa."