AfriGeneas Poet: Sojourner Kincaid Rolle

In This Time

In every reckoning hour
We plea to the God of our fathers, the Jesus of our mothers
Beckoning the angels

In the same old voice
We call down our ancestors from the beginning of time
Counting ourselves in their number

In the moments before dawn
We mimic the soft sigh of our mothers
crying out for daughters lost in the great wood

In the twilight
We echo the bold tones of our fathers
bellowing to sons of sons floundering in the crosscurrents

Rise up with unflinching determination
Emerge from the darkened wood
Free yourself from the sucking flood

In the dark of ages night
Expose the hell of bondage to the gazing world
Strike a blow for freedom

Speak with an old voice
Light a new light
Rise Up!

© Sojourner Kincaid Rolle 1998. All rights reserved.

Heal

There is that time
when the pronouncements of surgeons
count not nearly as much as a whispered hope
when the fingers wielding scapel
can neither put back nor rejoin.
Herein is the real domain of the creator;
the building of the sinew,
the melding of synapse.

We grasp for life.
It is a involuntariness of human
outstretched fingers
reaching into the abyss - risking failure
knowing it is the welding power of love that must
reach into the sinew, across the synapse;
burning white hot,
warming the cooling bed.

And Now We'll Have A Poem

Remembering Miss Ruffin and Mrs. Hicks

At Sunday teas and evening sings,
recitations set the tone.
All gussied up and smelling sweet,
hometown ladies would bring the poem.
Soprano sirens highly pitched
rhyming rhymic tight composures-
soliloquies on local mores.
Righteous reverent ways to tread
Rules to live by so to speak.
Vicissitudes of daily life.
Quirks and queer occurrences
seldom more quixotic
than fickle fate or dire misfortune.
Occasionally a precious cat
or pesky frisky wayward pup
might illustrate the woes of sin.
Symbolic treasure's wistful yearning
for love sublime or ample fortune.
Always ending slightly cryptic
on a high note.

© Sojourner Rolle. All rights reserved.

keeping watch

i. north
i sit at the foot of snow-capped mountains
i listen to sounds older than my heart
beats on a hollow drum squeals of a grey whale
i admire the gilded scales of long fishes
we are survivors

ii. east
i wear pearls and silk
my hands hold threads gathered from the spectrum
i weave my own diaphanous shroud
butterflies light on my shoulder
i move among the birds of paradise my heart open

iii. south
i rock in a hand-me-down chair
keeping time with a paper fan
humming bye and bye
petunias blossom in a window box
a bubbling cobbler cools on the sill
i soak my feet in warm rain water
alone but not lonely

iv. west
wrapped in a blanket of history
i reside on the horizon
winds storm across my breast
outside my door
desert flowers tend themselves
dust devils dance in the july heat
from chiseled sand and sacred clay
my fingers mold a vessel for the water's journey
i chew soft a brush made of yucca
i paint legends of the earth on its body
i tend the fire in which it will harden
i no longer hunger for love

v.
my soul is joyous
i wait for Illumination
i listen for the choir of angels
with whom i will sing