God directs life's journey but wont force the hand: creating foliage and leaves - man might understand.
From the smallest to the grandest need there be more? Allusions to human happiness there are four.
Consuming and procreating: collecting Wolffia leaves floating on a sluggish stream.
Gathering degrees and acquiring initials: counting orange fat fish slicing below Hermine water lily leaves.
Giving and receiving indissoluble love, as in the beginning, between Adam and Eve: unfolding and unfolding of subtropical Banana leaves, blowing in the gentlest and stiffest of breezes.
Discovering perfect beauty, love, truth, justice, and being: uniting entirely in Raphia Regalis leaves.
- Gary Edward Geraci
In the book FINDING TRUE HAPPINESS by Robert Spitzer, a four (4) level hierarchal chart is presented titled "FOUR LEVELS OF DESIRE-HAPPINESS." Level 1 happiness is obtained by the External-Pleasure-Material, Level 2 by the Ego-Comparitive, Level 3 by the Contributive-Empathetic, and Level 4 by the Transcendent. For true lasting happiness and joy, the Level 4 happiness is the goal. The draft poem was initially titled "Level 4 Happiness." Nonetheless, these four levels of of 'desire-happiness' are the subject matter of my poem. Using the Level 1-4 descriptors simply would have been entirely too technical and un-inspirational for something poetic I thought. The challenge was to come up with words and phrases that would describe an ascension from the least important to the most important or from the smallest to the grandest or from the easiest to the hardest, slightest to loftiest, etc.. In my notebook are brainstorming entries such as: more and more challenging hiking paths, 1st year of college through 4th year of college, four species of leaves from the smallest to the grandest (after looking out the window and seeing my wife's favorite banana plant leaves blowing - she's a native Filipina from the beautiful islands of the Philippines where the banana leaves never, ever die down), progression in music making from nursery hymns to Bach, mowing four properties from my house to the White House (I'm not kidding folks - I do like mowing my yard), cartoon animating from stick figures (my-own - see the 12 cartoon hand-drum YouTube lessons, about the halfway mark in each, in my blog The Beat Goes On) to Disney Animation. The final inspiration came with the "leaf option," I made a brief bit of Google research, selected the leaves for my poem, and wrapped it all up. From the smallest leaf to the grandest leaf, what we pursue in life most vigorously determines our happiness and joy!
ReplyDeleteI added two additional lines, the first two lines, on 05/11/2017 after receiving feedback from an accomplished writer of poetry, Ms. Mary Harwell Sayler of the Christian Poetry & Writers FaceBook group.
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