Day: July 31, 2026

As a kid, he fished all the time
and loved to catch fish.

But he didn’t fish out of necessity
for food. He fished merely for sport.

And instead of throwing the fish back
in the water, he just let them die.

Then when he was in his late teens
he had a dream where the hundreds

of fish he had caught and killed
appeared before him one by one.

He felt the searing pain and the agony
he had caused those fish.

The pain and agony were so real,
he felt like he was going to die too.

He woke up uncertain if he were
dead or living

and felt something like lifesaving
relief when he realized it was just a dream.

And he never fished again after that dream,
which to this day he feels was more than a dream.

Bob Boyd

I see this over and over. Couples fall in love,
but as time and new love passions pass,
the love often becomes bitter sweet. And
eventually the love is gone and the
couples part.

I’ve experienced this myself a number of
times. It’s as if after the euphoria of new
love passes, the hidden parts of the
loved one emerge.

Sometimes seemingly from dark corners
of their souls, like the woman who a year
after love had bloomed stole from me, and
I saw the dark, hidden parts in her, and she
had destroyed my love for her forever.

But that was only one of the countless often
bitter relationship refrains playing out every
day all over the world.

How I wish it wasn’t so.

Bob Boyd

He spies a lone butterfly
with splendid colors,
blues, oranges and purples.

He see it land on some violet
hibiscus flowers, and its wings
flutter as if delighted with its
find.

But then from under the flowers
two claws snatch the butterfly
into the chewing mandibles of
a praying mantis.

He’s shocked by the horror of it,
a beautiful, harmless insect
snatched out of this world.

And he wonders why the hell
does the world have to be
filled with so much carnage.

A world where beautiful
butterflies and beautiful people
are brutally taken out of it
every second, every minute,
every hour of every day.

Bob Boyd