No Ordinary Waterfall

(for Gwen Brooks)

 

may your words: coiled concise, darkly bright, ever flow never erode

nor recede but always be thought seed a growing green that feeds

the spirit thirst of us who sojourn in desert clime seeking

soil deep enough to support dense neo-african roots; gwen

love is you who blew syllabled breaths into politicized psyches,

exhaled stanzaed transmissions that raised our imaginations

buoyed us with the simple leverage of speech booted on the black

rock of conscious lyrics sung precise as talk drum heartbeats

rhythmically sounded by skilled hands rapping life cycles

reverberating off the scarred hides of our time

 

you are no ordinary waterfall but a sacred pouring sparkling

liquid clear as crystal joy tears in grand motherly eyes

surveying with knowing surprise the accomplishments

of progeny who yesterday were but babbling babes;

gwen, we are the scribes, wordsmiths and versifiers

you inspired, our rhymes succulent juice of precious fruit

grown ripe atop the griot height of mahogany poet trees

and watered by the elixired libation of our sagacious

queen mother humbly uttering a holistic incantation:

write as black as you be and be as black as all we

collected, resurrected, rightly rendered, remembered

 

—kalamu ya salaam