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Saturday, March 2, 2019

The human condition; in verse


“As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.” – N. Scott Momaday

On Feb. 27, Momaday’s 85th birthday, I wrote about his award-winning lifetime of writing in multiple genres.  Among those award-winning achievements are several for poetry, led by his collections Angle of Geese and The Gourd Dancer.        A member of the Kiowa tribe and native of Oklahoma, Momaday also is that state’s one-time Poet Laureate.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is his thoughtful and thought-provoking, 
 

                                                The Earth
Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon
the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up
to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from
as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon
it.

He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at
every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon
it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest
motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and
all the colors of the dawn and dusk.

For we are held by more than the force of gravity to the earth.
It is the entity from which we are sprung, and that into which
we are dissolved in time. The blood of the whole human race
is invested in it. We are moored there, rooted as surely, as
deeply as are the ancient redwoods and bristlecones.


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