The Bricks Bearing His Name
There stood old Sturtevant,
Who had been watching here,
For over hundreds of years,
Overlooking at the bowl, still and sheer.
The leaves were falling, the wind chilling,
But old Sturtevant never made a move.
And one day an eager student asked:
“People come and go, but why you never leave?”
To his astonishment the old man spoke,
In a manner most benign,
And on and on he told,
A story, in a voice so divine.
“When I was young I had a dream,
As grand as that of Martin Luther King.
I dreamed to catch the wind,
And refine it, confine it to spring.
People would thank me for my deed,
To jail this ruthless air.
So when the coldness came,
Our skin would be fair.
So around the earth I ran,
To capture this amorphous shape.
Again and again I attempted,
But I saw nothing in my gape.
So down I lay, utterly bemused,
What should I do to contain the gust?
Boom! a hunch took over my mind,
Surely, I had to own it to reign over it.
Thereafter I changed my plan,
‘cause winter was bitter anyway.
I took out all my iron tools,
And built giant fans with no delay.
Soon my invention powered the country,
And cooled the sweat of the scorching summer.
My factory sat in Boston,
On the ground of Jamaica Plain,
My wind blew to Europe,
Stirred ripples on a German river.
And now I am here, standing in oblivion.”
The old man creased, pondering in silence.
His eyes were tearing sand,
On the path that walk the students .
In a trice he disappeared.
Into the wind, he had gone without fame .
The last thing he ever left,
Were some bricks bearing his name.