Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
     I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
     He did a lazy sway . . .
     He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
     O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
     Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
     O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
     "Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
       Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
       I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
       And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
     "I got the Weary Blues
       And I can’t be satisfied.
       Got the Weary Blues
       And can’t be satisfied—
       I ain’t happy no mo’
       And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

We suffer through blinding equatorial heat,
refusing to unfold the suspended bamboo shade 
nested by a pair of hardworking, cheerless sparrows.
We’ve watched them fly in-and-out of their double
entryways, dried grass, twigs clamped in their beaks.
They skip, nestle in their woodsy tunnel punctured
with light, we presume, not total darkness, their eggs
aglow like lunar orbs. What is a home? How easily 
it can be destroyed: the untying of traditional ropes,
pull, the scroll-unraveling. For want of a sweltering
living room to be thrown into relief by shadow.

The sunning couple perch open-winged, tube lofty
as in Aristophanes' city of birds, home made sturdy
by creature logic and faith that it will all remain afloat.

The prison-house in which I live

Is falling to decay,

But God renews my spirit’s strength

Within these walls of clay.

For me a dimness slowly creeps

Around earth’s fairest light,

But heaven grows clearer to my view,

And fairer to my sight.

It may be earth’s sweet harmonies

Are duller to my ear,

But music from my Father’s house

Begins to float more near.

Then let the pillars of my home

Crumble and fall away;

Lo, God’s dear love within my soul

Renews it day by day.

How much grit do you think you've got? 
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot? 
You may talk of pluck; it's an easy word, 
And where'er you go it is often heard; 
But can you tell to a jot or guess 
Just how much courage you now possess? 


You may stand to trouble and keep your grin, 
But have you tackled self-discipline? 
Have you ever issued commands to you 
To quit the things that you like to do, 
And then, when tempted and sorely swayed, 
Those rigid orders have you obeyed? 


Don't boast of your grit till you've tried it out, 
Nor prate to men of your courage stout, 
For it's easy enough to retain a grin 
In the face of a fight there's a chance to win, 
But the sort of grit that is good to own 
Is the stuff you need when you're all alone. 


How much grit do you think you've got? 
Can you turn from joys that you like a lot? 
Have you ever tested yourself to know 
How far with yourself your will can go? 
If you want to know if you have grit, 
Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit. 


It's bully sport and it's open fight; 
It will keep you busy both day and night; 
For the toughest kind of a game you'll find 
Is to make your body obey your mind. 
And you never will know what is meant by grit 
Unless there's something you've tried to quit.

When I hear news of a hitchhiker

struck by lightning yet living,

or a child lifting a two-ton sedan

to free his father pinned underneath,

or a camper fighting off a grizzly

with her bare hands until someone,

a hunter perhaps, can shoot it dead,

my thoughts turn to black people—

the hysterical strength we must

possess to survive our very existence,

which I fear many believe is, and

treat as, itself a freak occurrence.

There is a faith that weakly dies 

When overcast by clouds of doubt, 

That like a blazing wisp of straw 

A vagrant breeze will flicker out. 

Be mine the faith whose living flame 

Shall pierce the clouds and banish night, 

Whose glow the hurricanes increase

To match the gleams of heaven’s night. 

     “We clean to give space for Art.”
        Micaela Miranda, Freedom Theatre, Palestine

Work was a shining refuge when wind sank its tooth
into my mind. Everything we love is going away,
drifting – but you could sweep this stretch of floor,
this patio or porch, gather white stones in a bucket,
rake the patch for future planting, mop the counter
with a rag. Lovely wet gray rag, squeeze it hard
it does so much. Clear the yard of blowing bits of plastic.
The glory in the doing. The breath of the doing.
Sometimes the simplest move kept fear from
fragmenting into no energy at all, or sorrow from
multiplying, or sorrow from being the only person
living in the house.

after Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

Candy-colored bulbs frame a girl for a holiday.

If the wicked call from the other side, she doesn’t hear. Blinds shut. Devices

blink & twitter. Before it’s too late, her mother snaps a picture—anticipates

angst & oddly angled aches, strawberry letters. Whatevers.

The mother will mark the photo tomorrow. Sign. Seal. We’re all well!

—one of the last acceptable print messages.  Meanwhile, Soup

for dinner, again? What else? It’s winter. Herbal constellations swivel in froth. Stir.

She samples with a lean near bowing. Steam on closed eyelids.

Mothers ought to give thanks.

Simeon, she thinks instead, & then: her long-gone grandmother’s

tattered Bible, the daughter’s overdue library book

concerning States’ rights.  Why’s that?  She’s hardly felt

hated. X’s and O’s glow in the daughter’s palm. Look

how easy, the daughter often says. She is patient with her mother. Blessed

be the child at the center of snow & flu season. She flew past

blessings long ago. So far from a little girl, really.

He had his dream, and all through life,
Worked up to it through toil and strife.
Afloat fore'er before his eyes,
It colored for him all his skies:
    The storm-cloud dark
    Above his bark,
The calm and listless vault of blue
Took on its hopeful hue,
It tinctured every passing beam—
    He had his dream.

He labored hard and failed at last,
His sails too weak to bear the blast,
The raging tempests tore away
And sent his beating bark astray.
    But what cared he
    For wind or sea!
He said, "The tempest will be short,
My bark will come to port."
He saw through every cloud a gleam—
    He had his dream.