Day One Hundred and Thirty-Nine: Bright Before Us Like a Flame

A plaque on City Hall reads: "We have tomorrow bright before us like a flame." On the lawn directly in front of these words stands this statue, simply named, "Flame."

The statue - which another plaque describes as a gift "from the people of Lawrence" - is an interconnected series of rotating wisps of metal that - not unlike real flames - moves and shapes itself with the wind.

In fact, standing underneath the statue for about 5 minutes snapping pictures (and ducking out of the way every now and then), I don't think I ever saw the same alignment of parts twice as the statue shifted in the steady breeze.

As my dad pointed out to me while discussing Lawrence and photography one day, the inspiration for the statue and the author of the quote on City Hall is the early 20th century poet Langston Hughes.

Though he was born in Missouri, Hughes spent most of his first thirteen years as a resident of Lawrence, KS. After leaving Lawrence he jumped around various other places in the eastern half of the US, and even lived briefly in Paris.

Eventually Hughes settled down in Harlem where he found time to write and became an inspiring force behind the Harlem Renaissance.

Lawrence is proud of Langston Hughes, and various sites around town bear his name. Residents look fondly on Hughes' literary works, especially those that call to mind his early years in Lawrence.

The entire poem, "Youth," reads:

We have tomorrow
Bright before us
Like a flame.

Yesterday
A night-gone thing,
A sun-down name.

And dawn-today
Broad arch above the road we came.

We march!

(taken from http://www.continuinged.ku.edu/hughes/files_city/legacy.html)