Book excerpt: Strands of MemoryEpilogue is a collection of sweet and bittersweet memories that reveals the authors successes and failures, dreams and fantasies, strengths and weaknesses. It tells stories and draws word pictures celebrating life in more than two hundred poems. The author shares thoughts and feelings about his experiences over a period of more than ninety years. It commemorates people in his life, especially family and friends, and their loves, friendships, courage, challenges, and strengths. It talks about love, family, friendships, work, war, nature, life, and death. This collection also sings the songs of his life and describes his joys and sorrows. It chronicles incidents, events, and the things that have troubled, hurt, and pleased the author, his family, and his friends. His hope is that the events, poetry, love, family, friendship, and situations described in both rhyme and free verse include many to which readers will readily relate because they have shared similar experiencesin short, that the poems will touch readers hearts, minds, and souls.