Written 11 October 1964

In 1963 I began keeping a journal, which I kept for about 8 years. My purpose 
was to improve my poor writing skills, and learn more about myself. The journal 
served as a diary, as well as place for essays, short stories, and poems.

This poem, almost certainly the first poem that I wrote not for a school 
assignment was done as an epitaph at the end of a story I wrote about an old 
couple who owned a large unfenced tract of land in the city center and welcomed 
kids despite occasional hostility and vandalism. It is also based on a personal 
experience of once throwing a stone at some old neighbors for no reason at all.

Don't repel those who throw stones
If you can teach them how not to fear
For that is the best of loans
That you might make people's lives more clear.