Medicine Art: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind a film by Chiwetel Ejiofor. *****

Medicine Art: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Copyright 2019©by Alice Walker

 
Medicine art has a way of showing up
just when you need it most.
And so it is with this great film
that lets us see man and woman
mother and father
children and teachers
a chief, and politicians,
as who they really are.  Poor hopeless  folks
in Africa might be the cursory observation
but it would be wrong.
Here we see mother and father
brought to the balance
of equality
by love.  Some of us remember this.
The glance that passes between
parents
as children look on perplexed, curious,
and filled with hope.
Knowing that in the bedrock
of the tenderness exposed
Our own future is promised
a chance to be.
 
Here we see teachers
as the demons and angels
they sometimes are.
 
Here we see nature howling
its rage
at what is done to it
by the greed and selfishness
of man.
 
Here we see our fate, globally,
if we cannot remember the necessity
of harmony, of balance,
in all we do.
 
We will starve, shivering in the cold,
Or melt and shrink,
Frying in the heat.
 
The mother says:  When I have cut off my arm
and fed you with it, then you will know
that you are my child.
She says this to a daughter
who plans to run away.
 
From a family facing starvation.
 
Our choices sometimes feel like this.
It is amazing that we carry on.
It is art that helps us do this.  Art, old leaders
(chiefs) of wisdom and courage, and that teacher
passing us just the right book to shove us
into an unknown future, as she sits
otherwise seemingly without power
in the forbidden library.
 
This is a film that helps us heal
from many things.  Today it helps us heal
from the pain of Michael Jackson’s life;
the sadness of all children
(the ones abused or not abused) intensely
suffering from severe lack of childhood.
 
Every actor has played the role
for integrity
for love. Every actor has honored
the source of inspiration; whatever that Source
is called. The dancing Kachinas get my vote
of who I’d most want to appear to celebrate
my life, and death.  But as a native Earthling
I am aware
I carry a dancing Kachina
in my heart.
 
I have given the cast  five stars;
so small against their offering
-this sad day for us-
of a limitless
and unfathomable,
magnificent starry sky.