by Lind Grant-Oyeye
She will sit where I knit, holding my grandmother
and the hope she brought with her
after the Spanish flu ended
after cherry blossoms hid their bloom
She was the queen of yesterday,
When daring ones made their own crowns,
Called themselves hippies or dreaming flower girls
and crowns were for the deserving,
not pick pocketed by invisible roaming ones.
Today, we talk about the mundane:
Snow melting into spring
radios acting as juke boxes,
health care becoming a real patient
and patients searching for night light,
when darkness brings its face suddenly.
Today, I sit where my grandchild will knit,
recount stories of how she spent her youthfulness
and what happened to the boys once lived
in her neighborhood,
After tomorrow unfurls its buds
After peace is made with the remnants of the day,
and the day finds a way to exhale.
Lind Grant-Oyeye is an award winning poet with areas of focus on social justice issues. Illustration: “Ancestral Map,” by Sabiyha Prince, an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC. Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.
Global Poemic 