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Somewhere on the other side of the world a teeny tiny thing,
barely alive,
took a different path
to exist.
And the whole world changed.
That thing, invisible to the eye, made its way through a strange new territory
and learned to survive in a world it didn’t recognize,
but found what it needed
and kept on going.
And the whole world changed.
As it learned to survive,
it grew.
And the human world
on which it found its way to survive began to suffer
because of it.
The human world,
which had grown to dominate the plant and animal world for thousands of years,
began to fall to its knees.
First slowly, in one country and then,
steadily,
continent to continent.
And the whole world changed.
A woman
A real woman
A big woman
A Black woman
is in the White House.
Her strong hands
and beautiful long arms,
their grace and flight will guide us.
Her stature, her strength
is now shared with the nation.
She lives in Our house.
And she serves us by her steady smile of the wise,
the bright eyed gleam of hope springing once again.
She, who walks in the path of all those who suffered, fled, and died,
now walks with those who oppressed her.
Their portraits hang on the wall of her new home.
She must be larger than us, wider, stronger
to change the course of history.
To look through hatred, to rise from anger to belief.
To be clutched by fate so.
What keeps her strong is knowing in her heart
A nation has answered its prayer.
To fly
He was destined
to be among the angels
To reach for his humanity
was his maternal gift
And he was grace
And he was beauty
And he was courage
in the face of unremitting
fate
His legacy is that
He was but himself
An icon, a god, a prince
A Man, at last
His beauty soared
His gentleness was keen
And innocent in death
Of death he knew
from his father
and of life he knew
from his mother
And to her,
Merging life
and death
he flew straight to her
and landed
at her side forever
I want to tell my daughter
who slides into my lap
and with a sigh
confesses she has been thinking a lot lately
about why she is here,
why there are stars,
and blackholes,
and where did the earth come from,
things like that.
I want to tell my daughter
Not to worry,
that there is an answer.
But as I hold her in my arms,
her warm body, her eyes open to the world,
I feel deep inside the abyss of those questions,
the elusive answer
the bottomless God that I have held onto for so many years
I want to tell my daughter a
a finite thing
that will make her smile and feel cozier,
beyond the safe cocoon of my lap.
But my words are few,
my feelings awash
in this moment so rich, so full of the life we so often squander.
I say
“You’re here because Daddy and I love each other.”
And he adds as he walks through the room
“We wanted you here.”
She looks at me to ask is it true?
I nod and smile.
It consoles her for a moment.
I do not say
I do not know beyond that why,
but she doesn’t need to know
the ramblings of an older mind.
She is pure and curious and alive,
her feet dangle still above the floor.
The kitchen table is cluttered
with place mats, an empty bowl with aquarium pieces,
a dirty dish,
and a cold tin flower pot
sitting on a brown ceramic plate my son made in school,
Egyptian insignia running ‘round the rim.
The table is my sundial.
A single spindly shoot curves its way upward
from moist dark earth in the tin pot.
Morning sun creeps into one side of a window
Growing.
I found it inside the bread box
where someone had shoved it away,
One more of my countless attempts
at making an avocado pit
turn into a plant.
Days, weeks in the warm darkness
had produced this albino shoot
with a web of wet white roots in the dirty water
I looked at it, amazed.
I held it in my hand like a newborn.
I thought the housekeeper
had just thrown away my last experiment like compost
Instead, it had escaped
And found in the darkness
Space and opportunity.
And it decided to take it.
Wondering what do I do now
Pull out the toothpicks
And look for a home.
The shoot is now a softer yellow.
The brown at the top I first took for death
sprouted the tiniest leaf.
I watch it everyday know what to do
Somehow I have given it what it needs
I watch it take sunlight and make a leaf.
I’m afraid if I water it too much or not enough
I will kill it.
I take my direction from observation
My soul is involved in this
My eyes, my heart.
One inch leaves shine back at the sun
from its sprouted top.
Small nodules run down its spine.
I push the pot to the middle of the table
to catch the midday sun.
The warm kitchen, the handmade table, the history of a thousand meals.
