This one is for…

Tom C. Armstrong, "your humble poet" as he calls himself, who, disguised as a mild-mannered writer/producer on Music Row for many years, a sometime songwriter, sometime book reviewer, sometime teacher/mentor to a new generation of writer/dreamers, a veteran of the old Smothers Brothers Show's stable of comedy writers, and a poet… serves the best, bottomless pot of coffee, along with a sympathetic ear for scribblers around Nashville such as myself, and has an abiding faith that talent will be recognized and appreciated. For Tom and his incomparable Beverly, and may God bless your encouragement.

Non unquam tulit documenta fors maiora,

quam fragili loco starent superbi.

Never did Fortune give larger proof,

on how frail ground stand the proud.

– TROADES, 4-6

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Visa rantis saevae defectu laboribus undae,

Quam Theridi longinqua dies Glaucoque repostum

Solibus et canis urebat luna pruinis.

She beheld a ship outworn

with the toils of the savage Sea,

long since offered up to Thetis and Glaucus,

which passing Time had scorched with its suns

and the Moon with her hoarfrosts had worn.

– argonautica, book ii, 285-87 Valerius Flaccus

There was a thunder 'pon the sea.

Crash and bellow, a deep, continual tympany-drumming which went on and on 'til the waters on this slightly foggy, coolish day shivered as if in terror, and the winds, already nothing to boast of from out of South-of-West, were shot nigh to stillness. Winds failing and the long Atlantic rollers beguilingly rippled and fractured like an ocean of shattered glass fragments. But it wasn't the wind that did it-it was that thunder.