A Memory of a Mind

A Memory of a Mind

for a respected professor

My heat runs near my heart
Gathering blooms like daylilies
In the staunch atmosphere of breath.
Somewhere a mockingbird is plying
His abundant score of tunes.
I listen, an ocean far away washes in.

My childish wisdom plays dark tones
Where no one bothers to intrude.
I have created my shelter with roses
& sweet notions that cling to my ears.
Summer strives with more sunshine
Than evil dares to counter.

My thoughts flow down river
Swaying like tulips in a spring breeze.
You offered me balm from the blight
Of crooked logic that streams from ignorance.
Coiffed rhetoric pours acid on tumors
Growing in idle, pampered brains.

You played your role imperfectly,
But I benefited from the jazzed up wisdom
Slipping out from your tangled sentences.
Now that you cohabit with a confuddled communist,
Her codswallop will stunt your mental growth—
Still your mind will one day bask in freedom.

A Prose Commentary on My Original Poem “A Memory of a Mind”

In my poem “A Memory of a Mind,” I fashion a speaker who reflects upon intellectual formation, gratitude, disillusionment, and the fragile persistence of independent thought. The poem operates as both tribute and critique, addressed to a once-respected mentor whose influence remains formative, though not untroubled. 

I rely on organic and musical imagery—flowers, rivers, birdsong, jazz—to explore the shaping of consciousness, while also introducing harsher, almost corrosive metaphors to examine the distortions of thought imposed by ideology and careless reasoning.

The speaker’s voice is at once reflective and evaluative, moving between reverence and judgment. As in an earlier poem “Downstream,” I favor a density of figurative language that merges the sensory with the intellectual: breath becomes atmosphere, thought becomes landscape, and rhetoric becomes a physical toxin. 

The philosophical undercurrent remains concerned with the tension between clarity and confusion, wisdom and corruption, freedom and constraint—an interior drama enacted within the evolving mind.

As I usually do in my poems and other creative works, I remain aware of the pairs of opposites, discussed and explained by my blessed Guru, Paramahansa Yogananda.  The tension between those pairs is always operative on this mud ball of planet, and my speakers are steeped in that realization.

First Stanza: Awakening Sensibility and the Music of Distance

The opening stanza situates the speaker in a state of heightened inward awareness. “My heat runs near my heart” suggests both vitality and emotional immediacy, while the blooming “daylilies” evoke transient beauty—fleeting but recurrent. The “staunch atmosphere of breath” implies a disciplined, almost meditative interiority, where even respiration becomes deliberate and meaningful.

The introduction of the mockingbird, “plying / His abundant score of tunes,” extends the poem into the auditory realm. This figure embodies both natural creativity and excess—an improvisational intelligence that parallels the workings of the mind. 

Yet the speaker does not fully inhabit this immediacy; instead, “an ocean far away washes in.” This distance signals a dual consciousness: one part present and attentive, another removed, reflective, and expansive.

Thus the stanza establishes the central dynamic of the poem: the mind as both participant in and observer of experience, capable of intimacy yet inclined toward detachment.

Second Stanza: The Construction of Inner Refuge

In the second stanza, the speaker turns inward more deliberately, recalling a “childish wisdom” that “plays dark tones / Where no one bothers to intrude.” This phrase captures an early intellectual solitude—an imaginative space untested by external critique but rich with private meaning. The darkness here is not wholly negative; it suggests depth, secrecy, and the unrefined beginnings of thought.

The “shelter with roses & sweet notions” represents a self-fashioned sanctuary, built from aesthetic pleasure and comforting ideas. Yet there is an implicit fragility in such construction: roses, while beautiful, are perishable, and “sweet notions” may lack rigor. 

The stanza’s closing lines—“Summer strives with more sunshine / Than evil dares to counter”—introduce a provisional optimism, where light appears to dominate darkness. Still, the phrasing (“strives”) hints that this balance is not guaranteed; it must be maintained against encroaching forces.

Here, I am acknowledging the formative illusions of youth: necessary, perhaps, but ultimately insufficient when confronted with more complex realities.  A corrupted adulthood often confounds the complexities that later snap and struggle in the confusion of time as it relates to space.

Third Stanza: Intellectual Guidance and the Critique of Corruption

The third stanza marks a turning point, introducing the addressed figure more directly. The speaker’s thoughts “flow down river,” suggesting maturation—movement shaped by gravity and terrain rather than mere whim. The comparison to “tulips in a spring breeze” retains a softness, but now this motion is guided.

“You offered me balm from the blight / Of crooked logic that streams from ignorance” positions the mentor as a corrective force. The metaphor of “balm” implies healing, while “blight” evokes disease spreading through faulty reasoning. At this stage, the professor represents clarity, a defense against intellectual decay and kuuntzian* buffoonery .

However, the stanza quickly darkens: “Coiffed rhetoric pours acid on tumors / Growing in idle, pampered brains.” The imagery becomes aggressive and surgical.

“Coiffed rhetoric” suggests language that is polished but superficial, while the “acid” both destroys and reveals. The “tumors” symbolize entrenched ignorance, particularly in minds that are “idle” and “pampered”—unused to discipline or challenge.

This stanza thus captures a dual process: the possibility of intellectual healing through guidance, and the simultaneous presence of corrosive discourse that threatens genuine understanding.

Fourth Stanza: Imperfect Influence and the Persistence of Hope

In the final stanza, the speaker adopts a more measured, retrospective tone. “You played your role imperfectly” acknowledges the mentor’s limitations, rejecting any idealization. Yet this imperfection does not negate value: “I benefited from the jazzed up wisdom / Slipping out from your tangled sentences.”

The metaphor of jazz is crucial here—improvised, irregular, sometimes chaotic, yet capable of producing unexpected insight. Wisdom emerges not from pristine clarity but from complexity, even confusion.

The poem then introduces a note of critique bordering on satire: “Now that you cohabit with a confuddled communist, / Her codswallop will stunt your mental growth.” The language is deliberately sharp, even colloquial, signaling the speaker’s frustration with what is perceived as ideological distortion. The shift in tone underscores a loss—not only of the mentor’s intellectual independence but of the clarity once admired.

Yet the poem does not conclude in bitterness. “Still your mind will one day bask in freedom” restores a measure of hope. The speaker ultimately affirms the possibility of intellectual liberation, even after error or misalignment. 

This closing gesture aligns with the broader philosophical stance evident throughout the poem: that the mind, though vulnerable to confusion and influence, retains an inherent capacity for renewal and clarity.

A Closing Reflection

In “A Memory of a Mind,” I attempt to trace the evolution of consciousness as it moves from youthful inwardness, through formative mentorship, into a more critical and autonomous stance. The poem resists both naïve reverence and outright condemnation; instead, it holds both gratitude and disappointment in tension.

The central belief underlying this work is that intellectual and spiritual growth are inseparable from conflict—between clarity and confusion, influence and independence, admiration and discernment. The mind, like a river or a piece of music, is never static. It is shaped by forces both internal and external, yet it retains the capacity to reorient itself toward truth.

In this sense, the poem affirms a disciplined optimism: that even amid imperfect guidance and ideological distortion, the individual consciousness can, with effort and discernment, return to a state of freedom.

*kuuntzian:  a perennially flawed, shadowy, malevolent mindset (I coined this term prompted by the pathetic machinations of a Ball State University professor, whom I hope to save from embarrassment by not spelling out his name)