From Alpha Flight #17:
In a lot of ways the death of the dream can be worse than the death of the dreamer.
So, Brian J., how’s that project of reading the remainder of all the comic books you own coming along? you ask, gentle reader.
Well, I am almost through the box of comics I bought at a sale at Edgar Road Elementary School almost ten years ago. I’ve got one Alpha Flight to go and a bunch of New Mutants from the early middle 1980s and a couple of scattered other bits, and then I can get onto consequential goals for 2017, such as Do something meaningful, you layabout.
Something of this bit spoken by Logan/Wolverine reminded me of something from a poem I read 25 or more years ago by Langston Hughes:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
I remember memorizing that poem after reading a collection of Langston Hughes after reading Black Like Me for the first time (and, gentle reader, I was going to recount a story of my knowledge of Langston Hughes poetry in a class on The Church and Racial Justice, but I see I already did when I revisited the John Griffith book).
Ah, well, where was I?
I dunno. Recognizing the importance of dreams, even when you’re growing older, perhaps. Also, thinking perhaps I should not have given such short shrift to the mutant books in the old days. At least, I hope not: Alpha Flight is not actually a mutant title, although I thought it was back in the day when I was watching the Mr. T cartoon on Saturday mornings.
