Redflame ~ My Take

I am R. Dean Tribble and if anybody cares I will be most grateful. I’m starting this blog because I’ve been wanting a place where I could freely rant and rave about poetry, politics, people, and places. If some wanderer out there in the ethernet stumbles onto this site he is welcome to speak to it and it will listen and perhaps quote him.

Let’s start out with a bit of poetry, to whit, a quatrain which I used for the Foreword to my book of poems “Blue Flame.” I think it is appropriate for here.

BEHOLD THESE LINES
Behold these lines and read them well
Nor ever fret their little seeming
Within in them are the thoughts they tell
Between them lies a world of dreaming.

A lot of meaning can be packed into four little lines. One of the most beautiful to my mind is by Edwin Markham. I’ve forgotten the title but you can never forget the lines:

He drew a circle that shut us out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle the took him in.

How can you top that?

There’s quite a debate being reported on the proposed immigration bill which has inspired me to write this:

IMMIGRANT

Let me not be a stranger in your land
Unwanted, unwelcome, spurned
Because I speak not well the English
Shunned if my skin is dark,
Or I pray to gods of another sort.

Let me hear a welcome in your voice
Feel the warming touch of your hand,
Let me share your dream and know
I have met a wise and gracious friend.

I will pick your cauliflower, dig your trenches
Paint your houses, haul your trash,
Clean your toilets, live in cramped rooms
I will work as your forefathers
Worked to make America great.

Let me not be a stranger in your land.

I think we sometimes forget that we are all descendants of immigrants. Even the American Indians got their immigration visas a few thoudand years ago from the Asian continent. Immigrants have made and will cintinue to make America

Thanks for reading, Dean