Poetry Thursday, free

 fleeing

~Kara Jackson

everything i do comes down to the fact that i’ve been here before.

in some arrangement of my atoms i was allowed to be free

so don’t ask me when freedom is coming

when a certain eye of mine has seen it,

a cornea in a convoluted future recalls my freedom.

when asked about the absence of freedom, the lack of it

i laugh at the word absence, which always suggests

a presence that has left. but absence is the arena

of death, and we call the dead free (went on to glory), what

is the absence of freedom but an assumption of it?

i have never longed for something

which was not once mine. even fiction is my possession,

and flight is an act of fleeing as much as an act of flying.

Copyright © 2020 by Kara Jackson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 3, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Thursday, owning our past and meaning your words

 You Still Dream

~Nikki Grimes

Here, poem meets prayer.

We are exceedingly comfortable

with posturing and self-defense

that masquerade as apology.

But what’s needed in this moment

is unmixed confession

of our nation’s sin,

deep and indefensible.

“Now I lay me down to sleep”

must make way for

something more muscular:

sack cloth and ashes,

prayer and fasting,

naked prostration.

Daniel understood

radical repentance begins

with this unvarnished profession:

You are righteous,

and we are not.

Please heal our nation.

Cleanse our stubborn hearts.

Show each of us what part to play.

Broken as Judah and Jerusalem,

we cry and come bending our will

toward the good

you dream for us still,

no matter our sin,

no matter what skin

we’re in.

Copyright © 2020 by Nikki Grimes. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 7, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Thursday, respite from our world

I Saw You

~Joshua Henry Jones, Jr.

I saw you as I passed last night,

    Framed in a sky of gold;

And through the sun’s fast paling light

    You seemed a queen of old,

Whose smile was light to all the world

    Against the crowding dark.

And in my soul a song there purled—

    Re-echoed by the lark.

I saw you as I passed last night,

    Your tresses burnished gold,

While in your eyes a happy bright

    Gleam of your friendship told.

And I went singing on my way;

    On, on into the dark.

But in my heart still shone the day,

    And still—still sang the lark.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 25, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Thursday, in honor of some of my AUG bday faves, HOPE

Hope.

~Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Wild seas of tossing, writhing waves,

A wreck half-sinking in the tortuous gloom;

One man clings desperately, while Boreas raves,

     And helps to blot the rays of moon and star,

     Then comes a sudden flash of light, which gleams on shores afar.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 19, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.