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Your poem was wonderful, Kees - I'm sending my Anne Frank poem to you all, also; I wonder how she would have coped with PD? "To Anne" by Liz Southwood, 1996 The last things she knew were the crash of closing metal doors, and the poison gas she breathed, which burned her lungs. It stole her precious breath, her life, filling her dear self with death, too soon, too cruelly silencing forever more the sweet, pure voice of a girl with a sterling heart and a faith so strong, she saw the good in the midst of the hell of wrong, rose still loving from uncountable injustices, an innocent untarnished by the evil that split her pleasant life into a nightmare, held together only by trust and her loving family who, expecting good, were slaughtered. I think sometimes of Anne Frank, of her looking out at the stars through the one window she could look through in her tiny attic, seeing the wild, free bird fly by. My heart aches for all she missed, that which she didn't live to see - a gardenia corsage for an early dance, a part in a school play, a boy's admiring glance as she stood rosy-cheeked in the snow; her undoubtedly gifted achievement in a university, the fine books she'd have written; the adoring look on her husband-to-be's face as she walked down the aisle in her virginal dress of white lace; her leading the prayers in her own holiday home - prayers of her beloved Jewish race. The glow in her husband's eyes when the children were born, the fun of their flying kites, reading Snow White before bed; watching her boys take their place among men in the Temple, her girls becoming like her. I've kept her in mind all these years, mourned for all she missed, she gave so much to us.