Rite a Riff

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wRite a Riff

     I selected this poem from among my ten-minute fast writes.  I hope it is not found too cryptic or pointless, but it at least serves as a page in a journal for me to keep track of things.  The poem deals both with things we evolved with since a single cell and things with a component of nurture and how those things affect us.  It occurred to me in writing the poem that education is influenced by culture and often becomes the practice of suppressing inherent human nature.  This idea got set me to pondering the definition and value of human nature and the satisfaction we can achieve from embracing it.  To use an analogy of the brain, natural things in our environment that elicit a certain response are to our senses as neurotransmitters are to our receptors, but such an analogy probably relates only to the most basic of effects natural things have on us.  Other endeavors that go against the grain of "human nature" can be novel, fulfilling, and enlightening, but to forsake the pursuit of following your instincts and "nature" (which can mean almost anything) would be a mistake.




Natural Things

Consider the natural things,
with their soft round edges.
the natural things
that strike chords which echo
through the tangled cave of your mind.

Before you know a natural thing,
you love it.
Deeply you hunger for wordless nature,
before you have known a natural thing.

With a natural thing you find yourself,
Immersed,
And it is the easiest thing in the world.
Before you have felt a natural thing.

Natural things can go unnoticed,
and I can dance for a time on a steel beam,
but shovel earth's coal into your furnace,
and filled with wonders your life will be.

Remember

     I chose a speech, Martin Luther Kings, "I have a Dream", as my mode of remembering.  I have always felt that a speech has several advantages over literature that remains on the page resulting in a greater potential for it to sear itself into one's memory.  To me, "I have a Dream" is not merely artfully crafted words as are so many other powerful and enduring texts, but a grainy black and white scene and a sonorous, trumpeting voice.  Simply reading "I have a Dream" calls to my mind the nervous white police officers at the Lincoln memorial in 1963,  the sea of rejoicing and hopeful faces sweating under the sun, and the feeling in the air: an intoxicating vapor of brotherhood and potential.

     I chose "I have a Dream" because in it's entirety, heard as it should be, with the responses from the crowd, the body language of Dr. King, and his voice stressing what should be stressed, it is more emotionally charged and momentous than any words written by Martin Luther King Jr.

Image courtesy of www.peterlee.com

Below is an excerpt from "I have a Dream" by Martin Luther King Jr. courtesy of avalon.yale.law.edu

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

This copied portion of "I have a Dream" best exemplifies the vast difference between a speech and literature to be read silently.  In this portion Dr. King takes advantage of the speech medium by using repetition, rhythm, and pause to coax the crowd to a peak of excitement.

Emergence

By David Henry Francis

When your ages take turn in the present
and grain is turned to a stream
When eventual death seems pleasant
When to remember is to recall a dream

I'll wait for you in nowhere,
Our love I'll cache in sky
Mush Hermes with my bootstraps
running and not knowing why

How much is molecular affinity?
I can find beauty in that
Our collective experience is infinity
My soul is under my hat

And I thought It was good

And I thought it was good