Melting Ice and Living Iron

     It was a warm, rainy night when I sat my mom down with me. I had been waiting for her to finish helping my brother get ready for bed. I settled down on my mom's king bed and watched her pick up the newly printed out poem, her eyes scanning over it. Eyebrows raised, awaiting instruction, she began reading with a nod from me. I sipped on my iced water, a bit too cold for my taste, watching her process Nâzim Hikmet Ran's Our Eyes. She seemed tired; the school year wears moms out as well as much as it does the kids. With summer quickly approaching, it was the slightest bit too hot for comfort in the house. Once I knew she had finished reading, I spoke my own thoughts about the poem aloud. I wasn't sure if she was listening or not, with that smart and open mind of hers surely picking away the poetry word by word.

     We began discussing the overall gist of the article. When I first read Our Eyes, I interpreted the poem as describing humans as small, complex pieces of one big puzzle. "I thought it was gonna be about something that would eventually be a part of something bigger...I wasn't thinking about human beings," said my mother, half agreeing with me. She would begin speaking her mind, then lose her train of thought, or began a new one with a more clear statement. I continued sipping on my cool drink.

    Sure of herself, my mother said, "When you work together, all these drops of the ocean come together to become this solid block of cold iron that cannot be destructed." With my mother's help, I was able to further analyze the poem. Before speaking with her, I had had no idea what Hikmet Ran meant by "the living iron". We discussed it, and both came to an agreeing conclusion that the iron he had been talking about was this strong bond, this strong force that is created when we come and work together as a unified person. Our Eyes discusses one of the most elemental themes of the human race: we are stronger together, or as one. As she continued anaylzing and speaking her thoughts aloud, I would nod and see her way of thinking, I would see what she was pointing towards which was along the same tracks as my own personal analysis.

     My mom slowly began speaking after contemplating the poem for a bit more time. "I think it's inspirational. It makes you realize the strength of the human race as a community, as a group of people who can all achieve huge things if we join together. And together, we are able to move steel mountains in water (referring back to the original poem), porque uno solo no lo puede hacer," she finished speaking in Spanish, her native tongue. Although each and every one of us is a magnificent small piece of a larger picture, coming together makes us much stronger in every sense; more intelligent, brave, strong, and we can learn and grow off of each other.