(This poem came by way of a recent offering to the Arbor Day Foundation tree memorial to restore forests that have been decimated by fire. With this new growth, I dedicate this poem in loving memory of Christine, Ava, Sandy, Brenda, Joel and Mona.<\/i><\/p>\n
One day while strolling through a forest vale
\nmay I embrace spiritual presence of family lost long ago.<\/p>\n
They were joy and beauty in their being,
\nas blossoming wild flowers during a surge of spring.<\/p>\n
Like the great Sequoias, they were tall in nature,
\ntheir branches reaching out touching and comforting
\nthose in need of love, peace and joy.<\/p>\n
By and by, while strolling through a forest vale,
\nmay I be surrounded in the fragrance of blossoming
\nwild flowers and feel the embrace of the great Sequoias’
\nbranches comforting me in loving peace and joy.<\/p>\n
(Guy Young<\/strong> was a former member of Peoples Temple. His articles and poems for this site appear <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>. He died<\/a> on August 16, 2025.)<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (This poem came by way of a recent offering to the Arbor Day Foundation tree memorial to restore forests that have been decimated by fire. With this new growth, I dedicate this poem in loving memory of Christine, Ava, Sandy, Brenda, Joel and Mona. One day while strolling through a forest vale may I embrace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":40162,"menu_order":20,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-40184","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40184"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131704,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40184\/revisions\/131704"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}