New poem: "The Most Precious Diamonds"

 

The Most Precious Diamonds

 

I watched a movie on Netflix this morning,  

Blood Diamond, a heart-wrenching story

of Danny Archer’s quest to smuggle a precious

pink diamond out of Sierra Leone with Solomon

Vandy, who dug it up after his family was

scattered, his hometown ravaged, and he was

forced into slave labor at an illegal mining

operation in Sierra Leone run by the Revolutionary

United Front. Solomon hides the precious pink

diamond in the sand, but word gets out about it,

and Danny Archer, an amoral 31-year-old South

African former mercenary who deals in smuggling

illegal diamonds, wants to start a new life with

the precious pink diamond that he bargains with

Solomon if he can reunite him with his family;

and as in all good adventure stories, Danny Archer

falls for Maddy Bowen, a liberal American war

journalist digging for a big story on the illegal

diamond industry. But when Danny and Solomon

recover the precious pink diamond, as well as

Solomon’s ten-year-old son who was turned into

a boy soldier by the blood-thirsty revolutionary

army, which nearly cost them their life going back

to Sierra Leone to retrieve the precious pink

diamond, Danny could not flee to safety with

Solomon and his son. Critically wounded, he calls

Maddy on his mobile phone and shares his last

words with her, how it might have been for them

under different circumstances, and the story

is brought to bitter-sweet resolution with Solomon

selling the precious pink diamond for millions

and getting his family back from the refugee camp.

and Mandy getting the full story on the corrupt

diamond trade industry. It would’ve been a happy

ending had Danny not died; but he did die, and

his last words to Maddy spoke to his change

of heart that Solomon’s love for his family had

impacted, and in that moment of self-redemption,

I saw with poetic clarity that the most precious

diamonds in the world are not pure crystals

of carbon atoms formed deep within the Earth’s

crust over millions of years under conditions

of intense heat and pressure, but the crystalized

meaning of our own individual life-stories formed

under the daily heat and pressure of the human

condition, which Danny Archer’s courageous life

symbolized when he sacrificed it for Solomon

Vandy and his precious family.