Poetry &Sprituality Entropy | 24 Mar 2007
Rivers
Rivers hardly ever run in a straight line
Rivers are willing to take ten thousand meanders
and enjoy every one
and grow from every one.
When they leave a meander,
they are always more
than when they entered it.
When rivers meet an obstacle,
they do not try to run over it.
They merely go around
but they always get to the other side.
Rivers accept things as they are,
conform to the shape they find the world in,
yet nothing changes things more than rivers.
Rivers move even mountains into the sea.
Rivers hardly ever are in a hurry
yet is there anything more likely
to reach the point it sets out for
than a river ?
© -James Dillet Freeman
James Freeman called the “Poet Laureate to the Moon” or “a modern day Ralph Waldo Emerson”, James Dillet Freeman has been one of the most popular of all Unity writers.
He has had his work taken to the moon twice, a distinction he shares with no other author. His 1941 Prayer for Protection was taken aboard Apollo 11 in July 1969 by Lunar Module pilot Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. Aldrin had the poem with him when he made his historic moonwalk! Two years later, Jim’s 1947 poem I Am There went to the moon with Colonel James B. Irwin on Apollo 15. Irwin left a microfilm copy of the poem on the moon.
on 26 Mar 2007 at 6:55 am 1.Max Babi said …
Ajay,
A marvellous poem indeed… it sparkles like a diamond amidst a heap of everyday sand, its seductive powers like in the simplicity of homilies that form every line.
He invokes the same effect as William Blake or R.W. Emerson, two of my special favourites. Two of their books could sustain me for decades on a desert island!
Cheerz!