Gold Blood

Skinny ten year old
hyperactive, fatherless
bully magnet, pitiable.
mother-loved, challenged
coached, muscle and heart
to surge through water,
passion pushed resistence,
goal glowed, mythic, heroic,
achieved thirteen years later,
records smashed, eight medallions
attest to Micheal Phelps' gold blood.

I know I am picking out one athlete here, and there are so many in the Olympics, and not in the Olympics, and dancers, singers, musicians, artists - people who emerge in excellence from shadowed or simply ordinary childhoods. And so many who look golden early who do not continue to shine. I think of the Alcoholics Annonymous saying "Don't judge your insides by other people's outsides." I think about the value of not judging at all, and the difficulty. And I go ahead and post the poem I wrote about one gold blood in particular with no disrespect to anyone else's achievements or journey.