Memories of St. Croix

Vacation

Remembrances of London

London is an experience!
The Queen’s back yard is magnificent.
It’s interesting to remember that in November,
I didn’t think I would ever see another flower—
or anything else for that matter.

Thanks, Lord.

The Old Curiosity Shoppe (1564)
is as interesting
as Dickens reported it to be.
I’d like to spend some more time here.

The photographs and slides
are going to cost a fortune to get processed.

Things to remember:
The London Ruins from Rome
The bridges over the Thames
The CROCUSES, HYACINTHS,
and WINDOW BOXES
The policeman who thought I
was “a rich American” because of my wallet,
(a “pleather” date book, notebook, and carryall
my father had given me to record my journey.)

Your Presence Soothes My Mind

Walk with me and hold my hand.
Your presence soothes my mind.
Stay with me and share my love.
Let’s agree to share and share alike.

There’s a French vanilla moon
out tonight.
Its halo brightens
a flat navy sky.

The soft vapors of today’s humidity
caress my face and stir my soul.
Hold me tight in a warm embrace.
Listen as our two hearts beat together,
yet apart.

Forget our fears and mingle our hopes and joys
as we love by the light of the moon,
and savor every precious moment
of a fleeting instance in time.

Stay with me and hold my hand.
Your presence soothes my mind.

What a Morning!

Black dots with miniature wings flew high
above my head that was beginning to appreciate
the coolness of the breeze against the hot sweat
that trickled freely through my hair and down my back.

Toward a round gray twig set to snap under my shoe,
toward the velvet softness of the newly mown grass as it covered the
dun-colored patches of hard bumpy soil that kept
peeking through like beggars, seeking the verdant
covering of the rest of the lawn.

Baby oak tree leaves clustered in their new-leaf
greenness and peered through amber clumps of seeds
whose pollen covered a black van a yellowish green
and made my nose itch and my eyes water.

As I looked Heavenward, a tree cut into a Y
allowed black wires to snake freely through it and down the street;
it stood out against an azure sky
decorated by cloud-like snowy feathers on a war bonnet.

Down the street, a tamed white Bobcat thrust its four ebon claws
out away from its yellow cage, looking like it
wanted to rest in the shade from our building,
shade that was quickly turning emerald green to forest.

What a morning!

The Fly-by
The sky is a summer’s day blue
and clouds like stretched cotton balls
sit atop the dove gray water bearers.
I sit, for the first time since I arrived,
doing nothing, perched on a deck chair.
Suddenly, my frigate birds
and the brown pelican with the white-striped head appear,
the frigates looking like hang gliders,
the pelicans like helmeted pilots.
The sky turns gray—rain is imminent,
but I vow to sit, to enjoy the fly-by.
The birds hover like dark specters,
silhouetted against the leaden sky.
The air currents sustain them;
the frigates’ tails appear as legs.
I marvel at their gracefulness.
The ziplock bag has my valuables.
Even if it rains, I’m going to sit, to pray, to be thankful
for yellow flowers and turquoise waters.
I feel the tension draining away
as I enjoy a found few minutes
to be free from the work of the day. Amen.

Two Throwaways

We were just two throwaways,
neither of whom was loved, and
both of whom wanted love.

Yes, two throwaways—
but as self-esteem grew,
we grew together—
no longer just two throwaways,
no longer someone else’s poison,
but each other’s treasure.

Musings from Restaurant Overlooking Oakland Bay
7/25/01

I sit, stilled, calmed, meditative
to the point where I jump
when the waiter asks to take my plate.

Seagulls and pigeons flit to and fro;
sailboats and yachts bob and weave,
their masts empty save for their riggings.

The boardwalk stretches the perimeter of the hotel.
Marine blues atop hulls white as expensive lace
speak to a quiet spot in my Center.

On the horizon, mountains loom dun and gray.
A steamer sits at anchor while a stiff breeze
caresses the streamers of a red, white, and blue windsock.

I am calm here, yet tired.
It is the lull before the cascade of passion
I must share with colleagues local and national,
friendly and critical.

But yet and still, the chop on the waves
Sparkles, too bright for diamonds,
but maybe like good cubic zirconia
against almost forest green waters.

I shall walk here and then sleep
a sleep untroubled, a sleep grateful
to be alive, grateful to be alive.



Above Salt Lake City, Utah
7/25/01

I sit here, a small dot in the enormity of the universe,
at 39,000 feet,
looking down at an earth-toned patchwork quilt
buttressed by gentle rounded peaks and a blue Salt Lake.

The towns and people below are but models
Placed on the infinite vastness of a landscape
made when God wanted to hear us humans exclaim,
“Wow! What beauty!”


The Strength of a Freighter, the Heart of a Tug
(Outside my window overlooking Oakland Harbor)
7/27/01

Teachers are the tugboats that push,
pull, strain against inertia,
then finally guide students,
the cargo ships of the future.

How can one stout-hearted teacher tug and nudge,
by almost imperceptible movements,
young lives toward the future?

One passion-filled lifeline is
sometimes all it takes to turn around
a freighter laden with potentialities,
to transform a student’s life forever.

Sometimes the tug must relax its lines,
sometimes to team in tandem with another.
At other times it must steam alongside,
parallel, yet close enough
to provide support or a noodge where needed.




Family Heroes

Some arrived aboard slave ships.
They worked from “can ‘til can’t,”
rising before day and falling onto
hard pallets for troubled slumber
long after the setting of the sun.

Money was in short supply,
but love was always in abundance
for family and adopted family alike.
If someone dropped in at dinner time,
a miracle meal or watered-down soup appeared.

Children were nurtured and taught the manners
that would help them make their ways
in the hard world that reality and experience would bring,
once the safety of home had been left
and the protection of parents could be no more.

Simple pleasures built one atop the other,
making a solid framework of mind memories
that would grow and twist like grapevines in the mind
as everyone sought to make a way
out of no way and to survive to smile in the sun.

No one told them the way would be easy
or that their humanity equally valued,
yet they, whose ancestors came on slave ships,
dared to work, to struggle, to raise families,
to survive in the accomplishments and memories
of those who came behind.

I marvel at their tenacity and the strength of their spirits.
2/4/99

Ancestors

Along the centuries, my ancestors have worked
and learned and taught.
Some had it easy; most did not.
Many cried, and others died while
trying to make life better for their children
and their children’s children’s children.

Today, I wonder if what I’ve done and what I’ve taught
will make any difference to those of my family
that has grown to include the world.
How many will cry because someone died
a senseless death, a sacrifice to the new slavery
that binds us to addictions and to material things?

I wonder just what the missing links in the chain
of humanity that has preceded me think
about what we think and where we go
and with whom we talk and how we obsess about
that which, in the long run, will lie in tatters before we’re debt-free.

What must these predecessors think when they see
the lack of love we show for ourselves
and for others when we practice, “Me first” and violence on a grand scale?
Do they wonder if all they endured went for naught,
or do they see a brighter day coming about which we know not?

2/4/99

Acrostic Poem

Books make up her world,
Art satisfies her need for grateful expressions.
Religious groundings never leave her, for she sees God the Good in all.
Beneath her calm exterior lies a soul that has had to learn to survive
An array of challenges and growth experiences,
Ranging from childhood economic poverty to
Adulthood’s learning how to overcome adversities by faith and work.

Determined, diligent, and duty-bound are adjectives to describe her

Personal quests for knowledge, goodness, truth, and beauty.
Always observant, she writes about her world; her word pictures
Respond to experiences both real and colored by remembrances.
Kindness was what she has had to learn to give to herself, because
She was always expected to do for others.
Little did she know that loving herself was necessary in order to
Experience all the joys that come with being a cheerful receiver.
Excellence in every endeavor is what drives her life.

2/4/99

Plaza Observation
(Outside H. D. Woodson SHS)

My eyes smart from the pollen
blown by the chill wind
that nips at my cheeks,
blows through my hair.

Jets roaring overhead
silhouette themselves against
low-hanging clouds,
portenders of possible rain.

Clusters of dandelions
dot winter’s uncut leftover grass.
Birds sing frantic love songs
and build nests in the light’s fixtures.

The gray-brown underbrush
frames trees topped in chartreuse,
tipped in burgundy-yellow buds
waiting to open on the next warm day.

Butterflies anchored in hair
whipped by April winds
sharing first one, then another
rainbow of colors to feast the eyes.

A flagless, rusty flagpole
standing naked and forlorn
in front of the gray concrete fortress
held down by the blueness of the sky.

Spring has come to the Plaza:
boots walking, dogs barking,
red dump truck rumbling along NHB;
class cutters scattering across the field;
new growth greenery
coming between the concrete cracks.

4/19/99

Simple Pleasures

Saturday was a momentous day
As far as natural phenomena are concerned!

First the maple tree in the front yard
was set ablaze by the eastern rays of the sun.
The flame-colored leaves shone with a light
that made me exclaim, “o-o-o, look!” to my husband
who had called me in to look
out of the window in the first place.

We stood, arms wrapped around each other,
and soaked in the warmth of the scene
unfolding minute-by-minute before our eyes.
I thought to myself that
things could not get any better than this,
but I did not know what Universal Omnipotence
had in mind for me and any interested fellow earthlings.

My friend and I drove out the Baltimore Washington Parkway
as we returned from a late afternoon shopping expedition.
All of a sudden, the sky was graced
by a sunset like I have never seen before.
Fireworks from an Unseen Hand painting the sky
with vibrant colors exploded toward the west.
The sky took on the strangest but most exquisite
palette of colors that have ever been played
across the sky and through the clouds.

As we watched, pointed, and o-o-oed ,
I pulled to the shoulder of the road,
and we sat in meditative silence as
the magentas, the oranges, the pinks, and passionate purples
settled into the quietness of the gloaming.

Victims’ Joint Statement before Sentencing

A tragedy of the first magnitude has occurred:
A young woman, who will never be an old woman,
is dead—
not by the vagaries of illness or accident—
but by the wanton maliciousness
of another human who consciously chose
to pump four bullets
from a nine millimeter pistol
into her head!

Not only did he commit murder
but also he committed the worse sort
of child abuse.
A three year old child
will never know her mama
as other children do.

This child will know
only by fading photographs
who gave her birth.

An entire family is devastated by her loss,
and two years later, her killer
still can breathe the air, see the sun, and walk upon the earth,
while our judicial system defends his right to a fair trial.

Who, may we ask, defended his victim’s right to live?

Our country guarantees us the rights
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This man’s maliciousness and callous disregard
for this young woman’s life and liberty
has totally disregarded her child’s and our happiness.

Everyone who was touched by her presence
has been irretrievably and irrevocably altered
by the heinousness of his decision
to make himself happy by killing her.

Justice is often portrayed as blind.
In this instance, we hope
that Justice lifts her blindfold
and looks with sympathetic eyes
upon all of those touched
by this animal’s viciousness.

We also pray that Justice will demand
the severest punishment available
within our judicial system of law.

This man forfeited his rights
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
when he made the choice to murder someone else.
He should never be allowed
to walk or to breathe as a free man again.

Society should be spared
the threat presented to all of us
should this man ever be released
to wreck the lives of others
with the violence that follows his displeasure.

It is a pity that his fate
could not be the same
as that which he chose
to inflict on someone else.

Therefore, we respectfully request
that this man be given whatever
is the severest penalty possible
in this jurisdiction.
We do not want revenge;
we just want justice.

October 19, 2003

It’s raining leaves—yellow maples,
fluttering toward fertilizing the earth—
Burgundy oaks, waiting to become
part of the crunchiness underfoot,
Scarlet sumacs, punctuating
the dullness of leaves trampled and nestled together,
waiting for the first frost to cover them with icy tendrils,
decorating their edges
like icing decorating slices of cake.

The sun dapples leaves waiting to fall;
the wind helps the willow do her frantic hula.
Calling forth the stinging winds of winter,
the joined leaves and swaying branches
signal that the time of quiet darkness fast approaches,
and that the time for introspection and rest
are fast at hand.
Soon the time will change,
the leaves will finish carpeting the earth, and
I will revel in being indoors and at peace.

Upon the Approach of September 11, 2002

I cannot erase the images
that are never far away,
the images of metallic birds,
at which I once marveled as awesome things of beauty,
suddenly transformed from graceful birds
to heavily fueled missiles of destruction and death.

Forever seared into my psyche
is the remembrance of a man,
airborne like a huge, black silhouette,
whose legs made a grotesque image
of the number 4,
still clutching his briefcase
as he plunged toward certain death below.
(Are we too identified by what it is we do,
instead of who it is we are?)

As the Towers fell, I felt
a gnawing in my inner self,
a terror that I would
never see my home and family again,
that I might be just as those who died
at the hands of terrorists—
forever bereft of places
of love and comfort—at least here on Earth…

I recall, in almost slow-motion, surreal detail,
the frenzied exit out of Detroit,
the riding in a commandeered, little red car
on turnpikes devoid of all
save a few other souls in shock
at the suddenness of the world gone mad,
the spying of a lone American flag
hoisted in haste on a piece of planking
and hastily erected alongside the road,
just outside Pittsburgh, where the other jet,
the one headed for Washington, D. C.
(and possibly the Capitol) had gone down.

Then the memory intrudes of
the Pennsylvania Turnpike signs
saying to avoid main roads in DC,
the horrendous headache, the hurriedness,
the awareness that the highway patrol
had far more important things than the car’s speed,
the comfort in knowing that if the main roads were closed,
the roads through the ’hood where I lived and taught
would be open.
(Terrorists would have no interest in places
already barren and forgotten.)

The specter of a plane against the night sky
gave me an instant panic attack as I neared home.
Why is that plane there
when all the skies have been cleared?
What is about to be attacked now?
Will there be an air war
over the place I call home?
Questions, questions, and more questions
swirled though my mind,
but something in my heart kept saying,
“You are a child of the King.
Keep your thoughts tied to that
which is good, pure, and beautiful.”

After a frantic day of hard driving,
arriving home to hugs and tears
and television images that played
over and over--as though I needed
to be reminded to remember the carnage of the day—
I felt undying gratitude for the comfort of bed,
the healing properties of again being with family,
in familiar surroundings, at a place called home,
even if it were now in world gone mad.

Courage is faith in the presence of fear,
and I was given privy to how others must have felt,
and still feel, when they hear or see a plane overhead.
Dare they look up and marvel at a thing of beauty,
or must they first seek refuge from a huge bird of prey
seeking to feast on the carrion that they might now become?

I know now how it feels
to awaken in the middle of the night
to the sounds of F-16’s and AWACS as these
planes whine and drone overhead.
There is a temporary awareness
that I should be able to sleep, because they fly,
but I am unable to sleep, because they must fly.

I cling more closely to things that are
most important to me—family and friends.
Things of transience are not as important any more.
In the still moments, moments so quiet
I can hear my heart beating, there is a peacefulness
that o’ertops the wariness stoked by
the threats and tirades of politicians and madmen.
The wound in my soul is healing,
slowly forming a jagged scar,
but forming a scar, nonetheless.
And for that, I am grateful.

When the Chain Is Broken

Matter is neither created nor destroyed—so the scientists say;
the chain of humanity seems to lose a link.

A loved one makes a last transition
to a place beyond our sight.

But the chain is unbroken,
for we live and die in a continuum

of ancestors who shall never die as long as one remembers
their names, their accomplishments, their joys.

When loved ones are no longer on the earth,
they are of the earth and with the ancestors.

They are present in the bloom of the flowers,
in the leaves of the trees,

and the sound of the thunder echoes their names,
while the flash of the lightning

illumines all who remember the essences of their presences
and recount the wonders of The Supreme Being’s gifts.

Fall Reverie

An oriental carpet of saffron and russet leaves
covered the sidewalk in luxury yesterday,
while the forced mundaneness of the everyday world
lulled those waiting for the bus to ignore
the free beauty provided for just the looking.

The explosion of colors
on the horizon is more muted now.
Birds cluster and chitter noisily
in the naked ebon trees outside my window.
Now they and I look forward to the rising sun’s
turning the sky crimson, then gold, then peach.

I savor watching the carpet, knowing I am part of the tapestry of life,
And yet
The leaves continue to come and to go—
Mundaneness, apathy, and now Thanksgiving all,
all seek my attention.
My life’s thread continues
combining, choosing, creating
the essence of the carpet of my soul.

First “Retired” Fall

There is a crispness in the morning air.
The sun is playing tag with the still-green leaves,
but every now and then,
one scarlet leaf dares to poke itself out
and gently whisper, "Harbinger of things to come."

My favorite season is ripe upon us, and I miss the excitement
of childhood preparations for the new school year--
new clothes, new notebooks waiting to be filled,
the smell of freshly-oiled wood floors and generations of chalk dust
somehow suspended in high-ceilinged classrooms.

I miss the sweetly acrid smell of burning leaves,
working with new students--some eager,
others reluctant--challenges to find ways to reach them all.

But I also have grown to love the freedom to write,
to think, to be, and to do what I want early in the morning,
without having to join the traffic hustle and bustle
or to shiver in the cold darkness that autumn and winter bring.

In Times of Crisis

In Times of Crisis

I lie, half awake, half asleep, half watching, half listening
to the television’s Saturday morning accounting
of weather, traffic, and other minutiae of the day,
when I am startled out of my reverie
by streaking, pulsating orbs and vapor trails
like I have never seen before.

I hear the newscaster say that contact
with the Columbia has just been lost,
and I instantly utter a call to the One Who Holds Us All.
My “Oh, my God” seems to be my life’s stabilizing force
whenever events too horrendous to contemplate happen.

My mind flashes back to catastrophes,
to gut-wrenching times in the past
when all I could do was to utter other, “Oh, my God’s,”
and I remember the Challenger’s Y-shaped vapor trail,
Kennedy, King, and Malcolm X assassinations,
National Guard troops standing in front of my neighborhood High’s Store
with rifles bayoneted, tanks in the streets of Washington, DC,
and making my way home through smoke and flames and teargas.

Then I remember other life-changing moments:
the daily body counts from the war in Viet Nam,
planes crashing into the World Trade Center, a man hurtling through space,
his leg making a figure four, his hand still clasping his briefcase,
the Pentagon in flames, a vaporized plane in a Pennsylvania field.
I recall children killing children and the cottage industry
of funeral teeshirts saying, RIP with a child’s vital statistics listed along with a name.

And I am forced to wonder why we cannot hold in reverence
all life on the planet, forced to question
why we cannot teach peace instead of studying war,
forced to think how hypocritical we are to mourn
the lives of seven while, at the same time,
planning the annihilation of thousands.

I am perplexed and saddened as I call forth again a prayer

Oh, my God, Maker and Ruler of us all,
show us the way toward humanity and peace;
lead us away from violence and the carnage
of war and crime and hatreds allowed to fester for centuries.
Make me a person who practices peace, shows love, respects all life,
and leaves the understanding of crises to You, who understands when we cannot.
Amen.

2/1/03