Ray Bradbury's Fierce Greatness

My best friend gave me a book by Ray Bradbury called Zen and the Art of Creativity, which I carry with me to this day. In it, I discovered that Ray's education stopped at high school, and he taught himself to write, 1000 words a day, every day. Thinking about that and the greatness he found within himself, the sole miner of his own golden core, I wrote the following.

I AWOKE, DREAMING OF RAY BRADBURY

It was Fall that year,
and I had seen all the leaves touched by man turn yellow

sallow,

and it was me,
wiping a century's slumber from my beige stare, it was me
returning to dust as well.

Was I not the same as the oak now fallen?

I could hear the air retreating to-and-from my chest,
but didn't the magnolia also burn its solace green
after its time had passed?

Ash, staining my palms, though there had been no fire,

it was dire.

And it was then that the heart of the world taught me
that it could breathe for me,

that no one is alone, the true purpose of the organic
molecules shared here and there.

Reinvention, it whispered, is the lifebeat.

We all fall before we stand tall.

So I stood up, still a student of life's work,
still two left feet stutter-stepping to the rippling waltz,

yet not alone at the ball.

Limb-by-limb I climb, and I speak not from the precipice,
but from the fray.

I would have it no other way,

for some always know east, west, north, south,
and there are always the masses who stare still at the compass,

questioning, unsure, but gazing on,
all made from the same elements,

life, doubt, fear, love, and the day, the moment, right now,
when all can turn on the world's soft exhale,

darkness yielding to light.