The library
is a red brick tower
15 stories
tall.
The open
green spaces
Are dotted
with students sunbathing,
Launching
frisbees over heads
Of pink and
blue and orange hair.
Professors
from other eras
Pass to and
fro
Dragging
long purple shadows.
The sun is setting.
The same sun is rising.
Ten years pass.
A young
Chinese man in his pajamas
Charges down
from his dorm
Right into a
huge flock of geese by the pond
Who honk and
flap and flee every which-way
But
eventually they gather in the middle of the pond
Where they
consider their options and fix their feathers.
The young
man laughs and laughs
Resoundingly.
His name is
Tin Sen.
He will
change the world.
""""""""""
Reflection: This happened about 20 years ago. My son and I
were checking out New England colleges. We were at UMass in Amherst. It was
early, about 9. We were walking around a pond on campus, below the library, and
what happened was exactly how I described it. I liked everything about this young
man: how he burst from his dorm in his pajamas, created chaos with the geese
and exploded with laughter. I felt like he was showing me a better way to live.
Now, so many years later, he returns in this poem to help renew the planet. And
his world is not a recycled planet or a wounded, over-crowded, war-ravaged,
struggling planet. His is a world inhabited by people like him who wake up just
in time to make change. Nothing can stop him because he has the will to stir
things up and he knows how to give himself over to joy.
(Article changed on April 22, 2017 at 01:21)
