A SMILE

"A poem everyone should read"

A smile costs nothing but creates much.

It happens in a flash but the memory of it lasts forever.

It can never be borrowed, or stolen

and it is no earthly good to anyone, until it is given away.

So if in a hurry you meet someone

who is too weary to give you a smile leave one of yours,

for no one needs a smile quite as much

as he who has none

to give.

.

The Story of "A Smile"

The poem, "A Smile" was written in cut-out drop-caps razored from the pages of the large type Reader's Digest dated February, 1972. The author was blind. Not blind really,only nearly so. Even with a loupe, the poem was the work of months, each letter fixed with mucilage to a Viva paper towel. The work arrived bi-folded and rolled in a toilet paper core on the desk of the Contests Editor at the National Library of Poetry and was transcribed on the Linotype by Edith Schmutz, blind herself, but a touch-typist since graduating steno school in 1931. The NLP (because the poem was quintessential) waived the contest fee and forwarded an author's copy (gratis) of the black buckram bound 1973 Contest Anthology to one Waldemar O'Toole,a longtime subscriber to theLarge Print Edition of the Reader's Digest. He dusted it every day for the four remaining years he lived, and read from it from time to time through his loupe, one Times Roman letterform by one.

KEEP ON SMILING.

SEND THIS PAGE TO SOMEONE THAT NEEDS A SMILE