To mark Black History month, Mrs. Shershen’s 8th grade choir at Harter Middle School is exploring Langston Hughes’ poem, “The Dream Keeper” through song. Its beautiful melody wrapped around my heart. More so, the poetry mesmerized me.
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
With their initial vulnerability, dreams motivate us to imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist. We wonder at how to make that world and search for the voice to realize those dreams.
While living out dreams may be amazing, being someone’s dream keeper is a privilege. It starts with listening. When we invest in others and their dreams, we wrap them in blue cloud-cloth. Once safe, the keeper guides the dreamer to see larger, to live bigger, all while keeping a too rough world at bay.
But the keeper can’t hold dreams forever. The world needs us to make our dreams reality. So we must support dreamers when they step away from safety, engage their voices, find ways to make the world less rough.
As the 8th graders sang, their voices shared a heart melody with me, their dreams, growing and taking shape. We all must listen to these new voices, wrapped in Hughes’s words. Dropping their vulnerability, they step into our world to make it more beautiful.
With Mrs. Shershen’s choir, I’m Elsa Glover and that’s my perspective.
