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Black Poetry Post #13 - Resurrections

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“Kinfolk and Community” Theme for Week #2, April 8 thru April 14

DevotionReader Series: 30 Ways of Looking at Black Poetry

Resurrections (#36) - Gloria Oden

When I was very small, I had a
rocking chair similar to Father’s.
Placed beside his (between him and the
radio that topped the music cabinet),
I would sit and rock beside him as
he read aloud the leading stories
in the evening paper to Mother who
sat across the room in one of the large
velvet and gilt chairs that were a special
joy.

In the lowering dark, by lamplight,
he forced our attention to the world.
Mother seldom spoke, quietly listening,
now and then answering some question
put to her. When there seemed little of
great interest, he would turn out the
light and quietly chat. Always, these times
surprised me. Matching  his voice to the
softness of the night, his was a muted
conversation, and every now and then
her was an easy laugh that lifted
across the room.

Such times I liked best;
when we three sat housed in the simple
dark and they took no notice of me.

 

Gloria Oden, Resurrections, Oliphant Press, 1978 

Devotionreader.com 30 Days of Looking at Black Poetry -- Day:  One O Black and Unknown Bards   Two Listen Children    Three For the Record    Four Ballad of Birmingham  Five    Six The Idea of Ancestry   Seven I Want to Write   Eight A Grandfather Poem    Nine Sweet Sound   Ten My Brother is Homemade   Eleven Those Winter Sundays   Twelve SOS   Thirteen Resurrections    Fourteen Jessie Mitchell's Mother   Fifteen April Rain Song    Sixteen I've Got A Home in that Rock    Seventeen Earth Screaming   Eighteen Returning Spring   Nineteen Newark, for Now [68]   Twenty Dawn   Twenty-One Fir   Twenty-Two Comin Strong   Twenty-Three From a Black Feminists Conference Reflections on Margaret Walker: Poet   Twenty-Four My Africa   Twenty-Five Strong Men   Twenty-Six Today's News   Twenty-Seven My Guilt   Twenty-Eight Forward, Always Forward    Twenty-Nine The Seven Principles of Kwanzaa   Thirty What Harriet Said

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