The Beast Within

Every once in a while something or someone comes along that makes you think. It breaks down one of the many walls that you have built within. Not so much to expose some vulnerability you have but rather to allow you to think deeper, to exercise your mind and think freely, beyond the superficiality of what that something or someone means.
I saw a movie last night titled "Beasts of the Southern Wild." This movie did just that for me. It takes you into the lives of a group of people living in the "Bathtub" bayou of Louisiana. They live in abject poverty in a way that no one reading this likely will ever understand (nor wish to). It's main characters are a 6 year old girl named Hushpuppy (the eyes through whom the story is told) and her father named Wink. As the film follows their relationship, how they and others of the "Bathtub" deal with the tragedy that befalls them, and their philosophies on life, you leave the theater evaluating your own, identifying your personal "aurochs".  These are my reflections shared in poetic prose.



The beasts stampede

Full speed ahead

Beneath their hooves

Unrelentlessly

Destroying the ground

That I've planted seeds

Cultivated

Massive in size and effect 

The herd

Went unheard

Unexpectedly approaching

Life. Love. Dance. Dreams

Hoofprints serve

As evidence of

Aurochs past presence

They now return

Fear. Pain. Dismay. Surrender.

Strength having escaped me

Weak, jaded

I lay with ear to the ground

I hear them now

The sound of thunder resonates

From the earth

I hear them now

I rise to my feet

The dust

Caused by the pounding of auroch hooves

Against the earth

Precedes them

Having been blown by the wind

Introducing their swift arrival

I stand

Anticipating the herd

Any moment now

Ready to go

Beasts to beast

By: Ernestine Hayes