Observations/Reflections: On Feeling Ungrateful and the Poetry of Edward Doyle
Status: Dictated but Not Reviewed
Published: 7/11/2011
Written: 2/14/2010
Dictated By: Flint McGlaughlin

If for a moment I am feeling ungrateful, I need only to reflect my way into a tiny sliver of reality. It is with this gradual glimpse that I can escape the foolishness of my dissatisfaction. If I cannot reflect, then at least I can read - I read Edward Doyle, the blind poet from Harlem:

To A Child Reading

My darling, spell the words out. You may creep
Across the syllables on hands and knees,
And stumble often, yet pass me with ease
And reach the spring upon the summit steep.
Oh, I could lay me down, dear child, and weep
These charr'd orbs out, but that you then might cease
Your upward effort, and with inquiries
Stoop down and probe my heart too deep, too deep!
I thirst for Knowledge. Oh, for an endless drink
Your goblet leaks the whole way from the spring--
No matter, to its rim a few drops cling,
And these refresh me with the joy to think
That you, my darling, have the morning's wing
To cross the mountain at whose base I sink.