every month is black history month

Greetings, Poetry Friday friends.  We all make a fuss, don't we, when people act like April is the only month we should pay attention to poetry--but maybe we also fall into that fallacious trap, forgetting that Black history is important every month, women's history is important all year, indigenous and Latin American history is important every day.

You might say, "Well, I'M important every day of the year, but I'm good with celebrating just once, on my birthday."  And yes, practically speaking, there's only so much we can celebrate on any given day.  (I personally gave up long ago even acknowledging Groundhog Day in school--omg, there are a thousand more important things to do than make a fuss over a nonscientific and possibly animal-abusive event, although I do rate the movie as making an important contribution to the culture.)

But, in the same way that we now acknowledge the power of asserting that Black Lives Matter, I don't want to let February pass without saying Black History especially Matters, reparatively Matters, every month, because we have got some catching up to do, people.  So I'm grateful to Poetry.org for reminding me regularly to attend to Black voices, and to Afaa Michael Weaver for this poem of recent history, current events, today's rehearsal of historical pain and glory, the gift of Black history every month.

You may have received this too, but even so let's read it again, out loud.

Midnight Air in Louisville

Afaa Michael Weaver

^{for Breonna Taylor}

Dear Breonna,
How many times, I ask,
           how many times
have I chased the thought
                      of writing to you,
of catching the poem where
                      it cannot leave,
of knocking open the door to a grief
           we all hold, our hearts
full of questions.
           We leave our houses to work,
to look for what we need to live,
                      or what we need
           to make the pain go away,
and your voice rises:
           “Oh hell to the no,
no he didn’t,
           Satan get behind me,
whatever, whatever
           the hell you think you are.”

I imagine that in leaving 
all of us you said:
           “I am done
I am let out into the world,
           breath I took in from it
breath that I give back in love.”

May I see you in flight
filling the space
           beyond clouds and stars
where there is no need
           of sun or moon, where
a grand city lives
           in prophecies beaten
by the wheels of history
where you are not invisible
           to ancestors who saw
these long roads down through time
to this one night in Louisville.

                      Bright Angel,
Luminescence, Woman Who Saved Lives
in Emergency Rooms,
                      Invocation of Heaven’s Law,
Living Song Riding
                                 the Eternal Dawn.

These titles I summon from license
given by Eternal Mysteries to hold you.
Fly now, in the woven air of the saints.

***********************

Enough said, or do I need to speak it again?  I do. 

"Fly now, in the woven air of the saints."

 

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect rounds us up today with some (oh dear) Exquisite Corpse play with the Poetry Sisters.