I get home tonight to find an interesting email. I don't get them much these days.

There's a poem on my "about" page. If you have any interest in me or this website, then you've seen it. If not, I suggest you question yourself and your psuedo-support of my life.
Underneath the poem I politely beg for anyone's help in finding the author of this poem. It's been there since day 1.
No one's ever commented on it, really. Not until tonight.
This email I got was from someone named Jessica. I don't yet know who she is or how she came about this site but she sent me the following information she's found on the poem. I am speechless at the information she was able to find and the gratitude she expressed by sending it to me.

Here it is (it is long):
=====================

I've found quite a variety of information about it, much of it conflicting.
The title of the poem:
� "May Your Sky Always Be Yellow"
� "ABOUT SCHOOL"
� "He Always..."
� "Yellow"
� "He Drew"
� "A POEM ABOUT NON-ACCEPTANCE"
� untitled
Who wrote it and what happened after:
� "This was written by a high school senior two weeks before he committed suicide."
� "written by Richard Karl Roberts, 2 weeks before he committed suicide."
� "This was written by a high school senior in Alton, Illinois, two weeks before he committed suicide."
� "This poem was handed to a grade 12 English teacher in Regina, Saskatchewan. It is not known if the student actually wrote it himself, it is known that he committed suicide two weeks later."
� "It has not been possible to trace the author of this poem, but it is known that he committed suicide when he was 16 years old."
� "the Kohler Co. is doing its centennial movie on this."
� One web page seems to claim it as the page writer's own; it's signed: "Mystif/Neandra 1984." I've emailed that person and will report back on that lead. The version on that page is missing the extra lines at the beginning, so I suspect it's not the original, but I could be wrong.
� One might be getting closer to the point with this prefaced description: "Authored by an adolescent male who had expressed discomfort that public school education prods its students on a one-way cattle drive." It gives the source as "Silverstone, 1997, p. 109-110" and the footnote reads, "Silverstone, L. Art Therapy The Person-Centered Way. (1997). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd." If someone has access to this book it'd be nice to know what's on page 109-110, but I'll bet it says it's anonymous and from Saskatchewan or Illinois.
. Two websites both credit "R. Nukerji"...there is no other info on them
� One credits it "by Dr. Helen Goodell" who apparently has something to do with education at Lock Haven University in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, since they have a scholarship named after her.
Time it was written:
� One page dates it as having been written in 1972.
� A correspondent says he heard it from a counselor in Buffalo, NY, in 1973, only without the embellishments.
� Another correspondent got it 10-12 years ago (as of 2001) translated into Danish and passed off as a poem written by a Danish boy two weeks before he killed himself.
Path of the poem as passed along:
� "This story was included as part of a workshop presented by Joan Franklin Smutny, Dirtector, The Center for the Gifted at National-Louis University."
� Quoted by John Taylor Gatto in "Underground History of American Education."
� Passed along by Kelleen Griffin, Columbia MBA '99, given to her over 15 years ago, when she was in high school.
� "This poem was found in the New Environment Bulletin, the organ of the New Environment Association, 270 Fenway Drive, Syracuse, N.Y. 13224. U.S.A. I am grateful to its editor, Harry Schwarzlander, for informing me upon request that he had reprinted the poem from an "unidentified overseas source."
Format and wording of the poem:
� One version puts "He always wanted to say things. But no one understood." at the beginning.
� One version has the extra first line(s) as "He always wanted to say things -- But none understood."
� It's written as prose sometimes, poetry with varying line lengths most of the time.
� One web page says, "There was also a picture, which I will try to scan in some day and post it here as well."
I suspect from the first line(s) being missing on many versions that those first lines could have been printed in a different type face or on a different page in some early version.
The boy handed this poem to his English teacher. Two weeks later he took his
own life.

====================

Thank you Jessica. I am in your debt.
I can only hope we one day are able to find the true author (if he/she is alive) and shake their hand for the most depressing and beautiful thing I've ever read.

Good day, all.