The Poet on the Street

Two things I need to actively design into my life…opportunities for inspiration and reflection. I operate best with good doses of these to flavor life....and I found them on the street last night.

I met a man named Donald Green selling his handwritten poems on the street last night. I was on my cell phone and walked right by his sidewalk table with a few tattered boards and papers. I stopped just before stepping off the curb and turned around to talk to him, remembering that I myself have a poem to write and perform in a few days for the Acumen Fund investor gathering. I chatted with him and found out that he lives a very simple life, and he had one of his poems published in the New York Times. He listened as I told him about the work I will do in Africa and why I have spent my career in social entrepreneurship. I told him I needed some inspiration and he picked up his pen and began to write this poem for me on the spot.

Donald wrote:
My cause is to raise the atmosphere
My cause is not to be forgotten
Not in arrogance but in the legacy that allows the people
to live in prosperity
To go among those
Who suffer with disease as malaria
To give the way in netting,
An answer,
Or a relief from the mass death and illness,
This killer and injurer, called malaria
And then in introduction of irrigation, way
To provide water so the food for so many can flower,
These inventions, not new, but wanting in various places,
All the work,
From inventions to other aspects,
All the work and believe to make it sail or shall I say fly,
Like the butterfly
And its wings in movement producing effect to stir the tornado
Or other wrath along the atmosphere,
so small, so miniscule, and yet with such impact
so isn’t there hope for us.