'Images of Haiti"

[Daton O Fullard]

"Images of Haiti"

This piece is dedicated with all of My Heart
to the Proud People of the Nation of Haiti

"Oh Haiti"

A thousand storms of thy calamity..Have all risen up
to soon challenge..All that you can soon ever..Have
hope and need to see..Born of and once descended
from a proud..But defiant and a powerful heritage of
African people..Who despite all their shortcomings..
and very formidable and compelling odds..With which
they once suffered as a people..Were themselves so
soon confronted..By one of the this worlds mightiest
armies..Soon gathered and so fully arrayed and aligned
itself against thee..

Perceived by so many in this certain time..To be no
more than a loud foolish..Ragtag group of angry and
desperate people..For sure no match..For one of the
great world armies..and colonial powers of this time..

Surely these impetuous rabble rousers fools and day
dreamers..Would soon be crushed in their ill thought
out rebellion..And soon be put down..By some of the
worlds very smartest Generals Soldiers and tactical
minds..Soon to be armed and charged..Then to be
fully dispatched by the French Aristocracy..With new
marching orders..To simply crush this fragile fledgeling
facsimile of a rebellion..While bringing this unruly group..
Of supposedly ignorant and backward people..Back
under their control..Putting them so firmly by superior
military might..Back in their proper place and line..

All the while the French not knowing that their conceited
actions..Would soon give new birth and hope to those..
Perceived to be so foolish at the time..To dare to dream
that they to could someday come to be..Able to have and
hold onto an idea..For such a crazy belief..To fight for..
and then help to form a tiny Nation..Of people of Color..
So utterly desperate hopeful..and determined to be free..

A people descended of and from..A mighty and proud yet
powerful African people..Whose Spirit has bent so many
times..But to this day will never be fully broken..By their
own overwhelming desire to someday be..The first to do
battle and confront all the forces of Slavery..Then defeat
the same very slave holders..and their arrogant Colonial
masters..Then soon rise up to become a proud..But ever
highly spirited..True nation of People..So very determined
at all costs..To someday breathe once again..The same
air of the elite..The rich the powerful the better educated..
The privileged and the free..

Oh Haiti thou has seen the very best and worst of this
Life..For thy people have eaten the Fruit of Life..From
both sides of this Gardens liberation tree..But never in
the brief history of thy tiny nation..Has your people ever
been faced..With such a daunting new and even greater
challenge..As the one you now find yourself..and your
young still undeveloped nation..Must now face staring
squarely..at the battered confluence..Of life and deaths
circumstance..Now standing so directly in front of thee..

For a thousand winds and hurricanes have risen..And
each powerful one..Has blown so very hard and so fiercely..
Against all that is right within thee..But no ill wind of such..
immense power and circumstance..Has ever blown so
hard as this earthquake..That has so recently shattered ..
Then battered the very heart..of thy Spirit..That every eye
in this world..Has now been so soberly awakened and..
Now forced to see..come so alive..Now in the grief poverty
and immense pain now rooted so firmly in thee..

My own heart is sad shattered and broken..and my pain
is felt so far and deep..In the very bottom of my heart..My
own now humbled Spirit..So very alive in my soul..Finds
it so very hard not to weep..Even as the sad collage and
ever distressing frames..of so many images..Firmly paint
no illustrious pictures..Of your present plight and situation..
Have all soon recorded themselves..inside of me forever..
In ever vivid colors..So fashioned from the chilling reality..
of your still evolving story..Now being told and shown all
over and around the globe..

Each image of your struggle..Soon given such new life..On
this very living canvas of possibility..Now placed forever on
display..In these halls walls and windows..Of my own aching
soul..Helping me to once again be reborn..As a Human being..
By truly redefining the very values..I feel inside of me and do..
Go now forth committed..To each new waking day..To better
appreciate the wonder of this very fragile..Thing called Life..
We each now in our own way..Occasionally take for granted..
Are now jolted and reminded..Is not a thing of entitlement..But
a fragile beauty filled temporary Gift..We each have been so
allowed..By The Creator of all Life..To live to know to share
and so temporarily..Embrace and hold..

For I too have seen so much suffering and pain..In these very
brief pages of my life and times..But their is truly something
so unique and so different..Created by fear and sheer scale
scope..and a true sense of tremendous hopelessness and
utter helplessness..Which permeates the inner sanctums of
the mind..That has now fully dressed itself..In the tattered but
flimsy garment..That has now so truly become claimed..By all
that is thine..

Oh Haiti..The deck in so many ways has been stacked up
so well against..The very people that are both alive..and now
dead in thee..Yet so many now wish..The simple but harsh
reality of your many..Raw and pain filled defining images..Will
now somehow just go away..So your utter desperation and
prolonged suffering..As a once proud people..They no longer
will be forced to somehow confront..and be made to have to
now daily know and see..

Sadly the world we now live in today..Where the best in some..
Must rise to stand right beside the worst..Where the ignorance
and hatred..We see come so alive in the hearts of some..Must
stand unashamed in the murky shadows..Nearby the generosity
of those..Who have decided to give..So much more of themselves..
Till their hearts feel like it..Wants to overflow the dam..and simply
burst..

I am so truly thankful for those who have chosen..To give and
share their love..of their common decency and Humanity..By
stepping up and away..From some of humanity's worst..Wisely
choosing to provide help..Now so badly needed in your hour of
despair..To help you to quench if only for a single moment..The
truly immense and staggering need..Of your oh so very fragile..
Nations..Tremendous amount of true pain hunger grief and thirst..

Oh Haiti..I to shall stand by your side..and help now to hold up
your weakened..Frail trembling and desperate hand..For surely
who alive among us all..Truly knows what tomorrows lessons..
May very well bring soon to me and to mine..Nor the price of
the same fate..We now see so dealt to thee and to all thine..

For someday the same fate..Shall soon see the same down
payment required..One day of this life by me..? For hidden in
the looming not to distant future..So much is yet unseen and
still unknown..To be shown of the future moments..of Our own
still to come fragile..Yet hope filled Life and times..

When I am to be forced by me to view thy circumstance..As
your own nation of people..Struggle once again to mightily try
to soon rise up again..On one badly bruised and almost broken
knee..I too am now fully awakened..From the sleep of my own
bed of ignorance..That has been allowed to in many ways..To
serve as a silent lullaby..Of complacency once sung to me..

For also lying beside your people..So visible in this crushed
debris of thy dignity and grace..Hidden also within these foul
shattered remnants..Of thy citizens now smashed lives hope
and fractured dreams..For when the exposed will of your own
people..Is fully being so stretched to and even past..The very
edge and point of total desperation..Even the very perception
of Hope..Has fled or just so to me..it now so obviously seems..

Perhaps so alive in your visible patience..Is the quiet tenacity
and veracity..That will soon foster the need..To help each and
everyone of us..To become familiar with redefining..Our own
common sense of decency and Humanity..As we and others
from around the world..Soon begin to help commit to assist..
You and all of your people..To take the necessary pride..To yet
once again..Begin to rebuild and restore..in your now shattered
nation...a new sense of direction of hope..By replacing all the
chaos..and pent-up frustration..With some much needed love..
charity..Greater compassion mercy and sanity..

My heart does weep for your lost lives..Knowing the pain and
suffering your people..Now must feel in the very pits of their
souls..Refusing to wilt in the face of such a great calamity..
Present in your everyday situation..Of being ignored and pitied
by so many..Who know so little about your inner hopes..and
the ever fragile dreams ..for your tiny nation..Nor having any
familiarity..With its simplest needs and goals..

Oh Haiti..You now must struggle to once again rise..Step up
from these same very ashes..To find a child's Hope..To dare
to dream again..To pursue and define a new emerging reality..
Just waiting beyond the horizon..To be soon again told..For I
too shall dream along..With you and your people..With the
vision to embrace a new direction..To once again help you to
redefine..and soon rebuild your once proud nation..From these
crushed buildings..of your spilled blood and ashes..An even
better more glory filled Phoenix..Shall soon Fly free..Beside
your Children and your people..As a wiser bird once again..!!

Excerpted from "The African Journals" Vol I
"The Things I Would Say To You If I Could"
Authored By Daton O. Fullard Copyrighted
2010 © All Rights Reserved