Don Gray
Art Essays, Art Criticism & Poems
The Boy Who Threw Dirt Into the Air ... A PoemThere once was a boy who threw great handfuls of dry desert dirt high in the air in a vacant corner lot. Dust billowed, hovering in vaporous clouds, a climbing luminous mist transforming the silent, sunset-glowing neighborhood. Usual air turned golden, translucent substance, treasure attainable by childish soul and eye. All things rich in magic; glinting rubies in the sky, symbolic emeralds in the gravel, diamonds in the dust. There was a holy aura of natural beauty then; significance; evil set aside by innocence. Poetry was everywhere; God, unnamed, in everything. Each small act of childhood framed in meaning, purpose, resonance. How good it is to live a life like that. Each thought and action of the day, no matter how undressed, full-blessed by shy divinity, life lived in naïve certainty. This feeling lingers, of a kind, in stunned maturity. But, in the end, when worlds have soundly pummeled us, we tilt, we veer, toward loss of dream. Every weary day a nightmare of dead life, procedure dull and dry as dirt that scarcely may be borne, much less looked at, thought upon. Lassitude, such deep unnerving of the soul, blunts and blurs perception of the world, once deemed extraordinary. The miracle of life, incandescent, now sadly turned, like any gentle vapor burned, brusquely swept away by pragmatic, arid wind of shrewdly testing day. Copyright by Don Gray
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