FRIENDS
We could be friends
How?
She wears laces and gold
I am garbed but in folds
She dines with kings
My meal is of figs
But the sun
And our dreams
Showers us in steams
As a single team
If
She has same vision
as my mission
the garb of her soul
is not now fouled
by the din of
desperate praise singers
determined to send her
lower than her grave
mayhap
our common humanity
might make us friends.
MEMORIES
I am pleased to remember,
those nights I loved you,
I am scared to count,
the costs of loving you,
How shall I remember?
your first sunny smile
your first faltering step
When you called me Mama?
I am quick to remember,
your first day at school,
your first lessons of love,
How can I not remember?
your first wet kiss
when I kissed your toes
as you stubbed it at life?
I am happy to remember,
when lessons by candle light
we tried to make the grade
as you learned to sharpen
your wit and intellect,
How can I not remember?
as we planned and hoped
that the gold will come
entwined in a joint dream.
I am pained to remember
when you had naught
to remember your need
to make as good a nest as me
you took flight and left
to make nest for another
Now gray and old
from light slumber
I watch the sun golden
In what I’m beholden
now I remember and wonder
as your seed takes steps
from one toothed smile
of sunny wonder
fresh springs of blossoms
a single wet sloppy kiss
an exchange of another age
the word moves to another
‘Granma’ for ‘Mama’.
BLACK SAINTLINESS
I am black,
not of the darkness,
but evidence of sameness
of the Maker’s wheel.
not condemned,
but redeemed,
from the yoke of ignorance.
They treat me with dread,
fear to give me bread,
and leave me as dead,
my tears are white,
my blood is red,
my intellect as sharp,
In every flower,
through the winds,
into every depth
across the meadows
I see HIS greatness
and in simple worship,
forgive them their ignorance.
