Poems

Find and share the perfect poems.

Let Me Begin Again

1968 –

Let me begin again as a quiet thought
in the shape of a shell slowly examined
by a brown child on a beach at dawn
straining to see their future. Let me begin
this time knowing the drumming in my dreams
is me inheriting the earth, is morning
lighting up the rivers. Let me burn
my vanities: old music in the pines, sifters
of scotch, a day moon like a signature
of night. This time, let me circle
the island of my fears only once then
live like a raging waterfall and grow
a magnificent mustache. Let me not ever be
the birdcage or the serrated blade or
the empty season. Dear Glacier, Dear Sea
of Stars, Dear Leopards disintegrating
at the outer limits of our greed; soon we will
encounter you only in motivational tweets.
Reader, I should have married you sooner.
This time, let me not sleep like the prophet who
believes he’s seen infinity. Let me run
at break-neck speeds toward sceneries
of doubt. I have no more dress rehearsals
to attend. Look closer: I am licking my lips.

Major Jackson is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Absurd Man (W. W. Norton, 2020), Roll Deep (W. W. Norton, 2015), and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia, 2002), winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Themes

About this Poem

“Writing is my form of action, one that finds me—maybe owed to our global health, political and climate crises—acclimating to an ever-increasing hunger to connect with a reader. The poem highlights the possibilities and joys of self-renewal and the promises of a new tomorrow. As a parent, my favorite mental pictures are of my children, individually off alone, looking curiously into an object. The poem, which is inspired by Philip Levine’s poem of the same title, quite seriously gifts the reader that sustaining image—a Black child in wondrous thought.”
—Major Jackson

Sign up for Poem-a-Day

More by this poet

Language of the Moon

As a child I wanted as many letters
in my bloodstream as the planet Mercury
would allow and so traveled the city
on buses late afternoons and read all the billboards
high above the streets and byways,
on sides of factories and churches and never
heard the sermons of the displaced

Major Jackson

2022

In the Eighties We Did the Wop

If you end your crusades for the great race,

then I will end my reenactments of flying,

and if you lean down to smell a painted trillium,

then I will cast a closer eye on those amber waves,

and if you stop killing black children,

then I will turn my drums to the sea and away from

Major Jackson

2020

Thinking of Frost

I thought by now my reverence would have waned,
matured to the tempered silence of the bookish or revealed
how blasé I’ve grown with age, but the unrestrained
joy I feel when a black skein of geese voyages like a dropped
string from God, slowly shifting and soaring, when the decayed
apples of an orchard amass beneath its trees like Eve’s

Major Jackson

2019

Poems

Page submenu block

Let Me Begin Again

More by this poet

Newsletter Sign Up