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Black Poetry Post #30 - Maxine Clair

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DevotionReader Series: 30 Ways of Looking at Black Poetry

“Let a race of men now rise and take control” – Theme for Week #4, April 22 thru April 29

What Harriet Said - Maxine Clair

There are many kinds of being scared:
hiding out with snakes in a swamp,
praying in a whisper so low the Lord
strains to hear. And in morning light
all gold and flashy, you trample down
marshweed beside the road, shivering at
every bird call, or you hold on
to some long, way back love, wishing
against all odds your name will come up
on his lips. Sometimes it’s a brief glimpse
of old square-toed death, reared-up
on his hind legs, waiting.
 
My train only moves one way and it’s up
a mountain. You left fear standing
in a field with a whip. He was your
running start. Now he’s sniffing around,
licking your heels, tasting your sweat.
You turn and I see him behind your eyes.
He suits you fine ‘cause he’s all you had
for so long. But I’ll tell you this,
you can’t go back. Fear will never be
so close to you as this cold iron finger
I hold in your ear. You can only die once.
You can die now, or you can be free.

Maxine Clair,  “What Harriet Said,” Coping With Gravity, Washington Writers Publishing House, Box 15271, 1988 

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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