Origin (Gratitude Poem #24)

For Jade Brooks

After Audre Lorde’s “Speechless”

your words root old growth

forest abundant

breadcrumbs and brick-a-brack

you specify home

tactile sticky stuffed

crowded clarities

you bring them all

walk through thought-mined

truth exploded here

where did you learn

those branch swung moss heavy

tangled dark tales

sometimes I think you come from a cave

where witches carve themselves

with the story of living

smudged into the story that is the soul

that has the same story waiting

you call it “Oregon”

close enough

we all have our

pronunciations

and I pronounce you

prophetess poet popsicle puddle

pick up stix champion

inkstained initiate

permanent marker principal

whoever you want

to be.

*********

Dear Jade,

I hope you are having a beautiful day. An eternal summer despite the increased intensity of labor during the academic year at a workplace like yours in a city like the one we are so lucky to live in at the same time. You see that I fled town to a place where the concept of Eternal Summer is less provocative and more obvious. Your amazing support, attendance, in-kind and the other kind of kind donations have been so consistent and transformative and helpful the whole time you have lived in Durham. And your poetry is amazing. You have such a distinct voice that I wonder where you got it. How you kept it. What you grew it out of. From here it sounds like the words are just there. So many of them. Just waiting and you peel them off the top and there are so many more waiting. You might have a different experience of your own writing. Thick, descriptive, fruitful, charming. It makes me wonder sometimes if ancestors have been placing post-it notes on your sticky fingers, piling you up with messages to deliver to us all. Maybe that's it.

Sending you so much love from St. Croix, where the ancestor messages are loud, and if not crowding than certainly overflowing.

So much love to you!!!

Always,

Lex