A Morning Song

In memory of Maya Angelou



Looking out mother's window, I imagine a day without hope. Immediately the brightness that qualifies life is darkened. My shoulders sag low into the valley of desolation. My fingers crumple under the weariness of aimless toils. My train of thought sputters the congested cough of an ailing man ready to crossover into an equally hopeless plane of hopelessness.

Above me, aspirations tumble from the sky were wishes once came true.



Here, bleakness is a concept unheard. It is the undiscovered element yogic instructors direct principled students of despair to inhale through noses that will never stop to smell the roses.

Roses planted in a garden surrounded by tall, lush hyacinths. The variegated shades of majestic lilac pepper out into the white cream and yolk yellow of daisies.  They herald the coming of the equinox, a time of balance. Renewal is on the tips of every marigold. Forgiveness on the tip of every thorn. Preternatural beauty swaddles the earth from agony and fear, and in the garden, Maya Angelou sows a seed of faith.

She sows a seed for women of color to love themselves for the onyx of their skin that absorbs the glistening light of the highest beam of the highest star. 

She sows another for the power of silence for the words she knows can never cross the chasm of hurt to be understood.

She sows for the literacy of forgotten youth, the sex worker who deals in tricks, for spirited songs and gay dances, for the hoo-ing of the owls and the chirping of the birds in the high trees, for the unalienable rights that alienate me from you, for the lost trust of those too frail to defend themselves, for the magnitude of small deeds, for the objects and people we put out to the curb for Thursday night garbage day.

She sows these lessons in to the earth so when I looked out my mother's window, I neglected to discover what hopelessness looked like. I couldn't see pass the love.