Many people asked permission to share the poem, Joy Angels,  with family or friends who were losing, or had recently lost, a special dog (or cat… and, in one case, a parrot (not kidding, and I really needed to smile at that point so I really appreciate that person (a lot!))) and my answer was – as it is with anything here – of course.

I have to say, in all seriousness, that the idea that something has touched your heart or lightened a mood or made you laugh out loud makes my own heart sing.

Of course, messages (and photos in some cases – thank you!) of coffee … or really any beverage (or food item for that matter) blown out of a nose or mouth… well those are just bonuses!

Anyway, several people wanted a version of Joy Angels that they could pin on Pinterest or print, and that sent me into a creative vacuum-type tizzy because I learned that you can’t just copy something from Microsoft Word into Pinterest.

No. You had to do science and math and stuff.

And there were these astrophysical-type concepts called Jay-Peg and Ping and then there was a whole geometry lesson required for something called Image Ree-Sizing.

I was exhausted.

And also, if you wanted it to be all fancy and have your words on top of a photo, you needed to Lay-Yer it and that required very important software called Photoshop. Which I figured was easy because people say things like, “You don’t really have to be at the family Christmas picture-taking day, you can just Photoshop yourself in.” (brilliant, by the way).

However, it turns out that to ‘just Photoshop yourself in’ requires about $700, and that’s only if you can find it somewhere. Because the company that makes Photoshop recently decided that indentured servitude was a better business option, and they opted to stop selling it and just make you rent it. For, like, ever.

Pause for dramatic effect.

Okay, perhaps there would be no indentured servitude.

But there is a learning curve, along with $700 or the lifetime (okay, one year) contract with Adobe, and this made it very clear that ‘ just Photoshop yourself in’ was not as easy as it sounded.

So I futzed and finagled and finally came up with a very simple image of Joy Angels. The issue is that it has a lot of stanzas, which is a very technical poetry term that only us poets understand but pretty much means that it is long.

So, it would be hard to print on one regular-sized page (except in teeny tiny little print, for which I would recommend reading glasses at….oh…..say, between 16X or 18X magnification).

Or maybe you could make a poster or something.

But it does seem to work for downloading or sending or ‘pinning’.

Plus, when I learn more about math and science, along with astro-physics/Photoshopping (and get a degree in graphic design), I might be able to figure out how to create a whizzy version like they do with the Rainbow Bridge story.

Though, if anyone puts freakin’ rainbows behind, next to, or around Joy Angels… wait.

Can I copyright with caveats?

I’ll look into that.

In the mean time, here is my Jay-Peg version of Joy Angels. It’s become very special to me. Your responses touched my heart.  Thank you.

Thanks for readin’

As always, you can come on over to Just Ponderin’s facebook page to comment or just hang out.