by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator
June is "Pride" month, a time for acceptance and solidarity with people of varying gender identities, a challenging task because, like fingerprints, gender identities are so diverse and complicated as to be unique to most, if not all, people who inhabit our planet. Pride month should be about openness to others and acceptance of whom they proclaim themselves to be - a great unification process. But our current administration is far more comfortable in dividing people, and it has moved to prohibit U.S. embassies abroad from flying "rainbow flags" to support our nation's declared LGBTQ population.
Kudos to the few embassies who went ahead and displayed their unity with the LGBTQ community, despite a presidential directive to the contrary.
For today's poetry selection I have chosen a piece by Countee Cullen, a distinguished gay poet who was part of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that one historian noted was "almost as gay as it was black." This poem, "Fruit of the Flower," reminds us that however wild or far afield our children grow, they are still the product of the same root system as their parents, and regardless of how staid and normal parents may appear, they once had the vitality of youth flowing through their veins and experienced life more open to things like change, excitement, and even diversity.
Children and parents are deeply intertwined at their very roots.
Fruit of the Flower
by Countee Cullen
My father is a quiet man
With sober, steady ways;
For simile, a folded fan;
His nights are like his days.
My mother's life is puritan,
No hint of cavalier,
A pool so calm you're sure it can
Have little depth to fear.
And yet my father's eyes can boast
How full his life has been;
There haunts them yet the languid ghost
Of some still sacred sin.
And though my mother chants of God,
And of the mystic river,
I've seen a bit of checkered sod
Set all her flesh aquiver.
Why should he deem it pure mischance
A son of his is fain
To do a naked tribal dance
Each time he hears the rain?
Why should she think it devil's art
That all my songs should be
Of love and lovers, broken heart,
And wild sweet agony?
Who plants a seed begets a bud,
Extract of that same root;
Why marvel. at the hectic blood
That flushes this wild fruit?
Poetry Appreciator
June is "Pride" month, a time for acceptance and solidarity with people of varying gender identities, a challenging task because, like fingerprints, gender identities are so diverse and complicated as to be unique to most, if not all, people who inhabit our planet. Pride month should be about openness to others and acceptance of whom they proclaim themselves to be - a great unification process. But our current administration is far more comfortable in dividing people, and it has moved to prohibit U.S. embassies abroad from flying "rainbow flags" to support our nation's declared LGBTQ population.
Kudos to the few embassies who went ahead and displayed their unity with the LGBTQ community, despite a presidential directive to the contrary.
For today's poetry selection I have chosen a piece by Countee Cullen, a distinguished gay poet who was part of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that one historian noted was "almost as gay as it was black." This poem, "Fruit of the Flower," reminds us that however wild or far afield our children grow, they are still the product of the same root system as their parents, and regardless of how staid and normal parents may appear, they once had the vitality of youth flowing through their veins and experienced life more open to things like change, excitement, and even diversity.
Children and parents are deeply intertwined at their very roots.
Fruit of the Flower
by Countee Cullen
My father is a quiet man
With sober, steady ways;
For simile, a folded fan;
His nights are like his days.
My mother's life is puritan,
No hint of cavalier,
A pool so calm you're sure it can
Have little depth to fear.
And yet my father's eyes can boast
How full his life has been;
There haunts them yet the languid ghost
Of some still sacred sin.
And though my mother chants of God,
And of the mystic river,
I've seen a bit of checkered sod
Set all her flesh aquiver.
Why should he deem it pure mischance
A son of his is fain
To do a naked tribal dance
Each time he hears the rain?
Why should she think it devil's art
That all my songs should be
Of love and lovers, broken heart,
And wild sweet agony?
Who plants a seed begets a bud,
Extract of that same root;
Why marvel. at the hectic blood
That flushes this wild fruit?
No comments:
Post a Comment