Embacing the Daughters

The best we can do is give the word. And be attractive, but having failed…I wasn’t made to be a politician....starting at 12.30 AM a week ago, 19 May, with explosions going off in my head, I did some work, then took a nap before 4, but  woke in a short hour with a stiff web of little bugs in the air around  on my head. I tore off the web and dumped it outside.

Then the next thing I knew my mother was reading a book in the rocking chair and I saw my two daughters in law, whose names both start with S, One was in a turquoise gown, The other in a violet purple red gown as they embraced me on either side! My mother sitting in a rocker in the living room was reading a book all the while. All this is told to explain the piece shown here after its composition last night, a week after this event, to show here we three are. I'm in the middle tightly embraced. Interwoven I should say, in the ones they love the most, their own lovely children!

In admission, my mother couldn't do anything with me either. Of course she was prejudiced in my favor, but that did not revoke my arguing around the table at 9 that black people should be given full access to the amenities of the middle class, a home and school. She had seen her north Philly neighborhood turned to Beirut by transplanted southerners in the 50s and forward. That was where her father had built the Tioga Presbyterian Church. But my mother was born with a cowl, which means she knew things. She dressed me up as a big green book one Halloween. Straps inside the box held in on my shoulders. There was a slit like in a mailbox on the front so I could see. Dressing up somebody as a book who published seven books in one year would seem prescient. She held her good spirits against the death of her first son and all hardship until a massive stroke stripped it away. She did not die. I dreamed there was a long ling waiting to get on a bus. My father was waiting there with here, but the line was long. She ultimately died, tired of it all, resigned in a posh retirement home after my father with old age passed. She stopped taking her meds and died. I am inspired with her courage and fortitude even if my daughters-in-law can't do anything with me either. I had a dream in the midst of repeated offenses held accountable for, not to  relate them. Offenses do as offenses are, scapegoats for the sins of others, yes?  There is talk among my sons as to how my wife can put up with me, something heard before. Well she likes what I am! Sorry. That being I am of my own people, stalwart, strong minded, living in opposition to the world, made a poet.