Laughing Child
Your life was an embodiment of joy
expressing itself to the world
in countless moments of lightness,
despite all the indicators
of your brief existance
that pointed toward a logic
of despair and frustration.

I've often wondered
about the source of the light
that poured from your eyes
and danced merrily upon your lips.
Your focus was obviously not on limitations
for your spirit surged from every opening
into a bright world of possibilities.

Barriers were no more to you than doors
and you understood you could close
any not fitting in the world of your mind
and opened others that thrilled and delighted.
Yours was a state of transcending choices
that never allowed transitory disappointments
to exercise control over who you really were.

You were a constant wonder,
one of the creator's finest works;
a perfect blend of joy and passion,
coalesced into a towering, wondrous spirit
that, despite the condition of your earthly body,
soared and looped and danced on air,
and personified the overcoming power of love.

Saying you changed us is classically inadequate
to the truth of your moments in our midst.
No one who knew you within life's boundaries
will ever be the same.
We were touched and changed at a fundamental level,
dared by love to search for beginnings in every apparent end
and that existence is more, so much more, than it seems.


In loving memory of Lance Porter Hopkins
July 20,1975 - November 30, 1999
(C) Harold Hopkins, May 2001