Tomorrow Is Not Just Another Day: Reflective Poems

. . . hikers not yet born when the fire raged

fantasize how wonderful it would be to have a cabin in this place

where nothing apparently changes but the seasons.

Today is a gift to use and enjoy to the best of our ability, or to take for granted as a string of hours. Great or small, good or bad, what happens today makes a difference. Tomorrow is Not Just Another Day is a glimpse of this journey from different perspectives . . . an introverted high school student with a facial deformity becomes the one person the most popular leader in the class trusts . . . a Black man endures racial prejudice to keep his job . . . a young soldier is the victim of a Rotary Club fund raiser gone awry . . . a homeless man buys a coat from a thrift shop and leaves the cashier speechless . . . a boy secretly morns the fate of a paper airplane he launches from a bridge into swift current beneath . . . a middle-age lesbian with a domineering mother achieves closure with a wretched doll . . . a college student discovers lost opportunity to say he is sorry. These and other poems within this book exemplify how each precious moment is given up for what we are and what we leave behind when tomorrow will not come again.

Richard J. Ackerman Jr. is a retired orthodontist and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. He and his wife divide their time between California and Colorado. They have two married children and three grandchildren. Tomorrow is Not Just Another Day is his second book of reflective poems.