Hymn To Our Seven Seas Poem by Paul Amrod

Then we will pledge a God-given mission with a resurgence of sensitivity as we underscore a colossal petition. Save this kingdom of lasting freedom It will sweeten every breath and deepen our earthly treasure with good measure. really very very nice my dear poet Paul......... you are bringing in great awareness through this mighty poem.. thank u very much. tony

This poem, aptly called HYMN, is much bigger than my ability to encompass it, but I'm still going to try. PAUL WINTER! He brought his ensemble to the Twin Cities in the 1980s to perform their MISSA GAIA. I was only 10 lines into your poem when I heard his sax in my memory, got my copy of the cd and put it on. When I read your notes about Paul Winter it was like homecoming. There are three themes you repeat: 1) Our planet's seas make up A KINGDOM OF FREEDOM, whose lasting value can only be affirmed not measured,2) Saving the seas is a human task, it depends upon us, we are the terrestrial gods that will save them, just as Vishnu's avatars were mortals born to save the world from vicious demons and Jesus was mortal-born to redeem it from evil. All we humans of today have to do is save the seas from ourselves. Remember Pogo's statement from the 1960s - We have met the enemy and he is us.3) We do this act of rescue, then preservation for our daughters and sons. If your Hymn had just asserted these moral goals it would have fulfilled itself as poetry, but the lyric voice in you did more, much more, to persuade us the cause is worthy. Because D-U-T-Y unadorned with beauty and desire is a Puritan gambit; we humans are creatures of the earth, and that as you affirm in the poem is a kingdom of freedom. And the best consequences of freedom are inspired by desire and beauty. Your poem opens with three images of sea creatures indulging in freedom, beauty and desire. Of course, those words are projections of the human mind onto nature. But they are the way we comprehend reality, and measure our moral response. Whales don't have to be convinced of their rightness of being; fish don't have to look into a mirror to know they're beautiful; the waters don't need an inner compulsion of desire to the good. Our ancestors saw such human attributes as desire, conscience, reason as divine gifts that raise above animals and nature. Now we have philosophers and visionaries who see such attributes as compensation for our human short comings. Animals are one with nature; human beings are separated from it. Animals live at home in the world; humans are on pilgrimage to reach that home before we die. Your HYMN is a NECESSARY POEM that marks the path and makes the journey one of celebration. This isn't a duty, it is the highest, most complete pleasure our freedom can grasp! !