"on the birth of bomani"

"we have taken the best leaves
and the best roots
and your mama whose skin
is the color of the sun
has opened into a fire and
your daddy whose skin
is the color of the night
has tended it carefully with
his hunter's hands and
here you have come, bomani,
an afrikan treasure-man.
may the art in the love that made you
fill your fingers,
may the love in the art that made you
fill your heart"

Everything Isn't, Anymore.

"He's my baby brother" my mother lamented over the telephone.  I heard those words as I paced up and down, up and down, the hallway of my home while compulsively running my fingers through my hair. The conversation began with a benign "Hello" and was followed by "Your uncle has been in an accident."  During the re-telling of the events that had occurred the night before, there were abrupt pauses punctuated by broken syllables.  My mother, in her early seventies, is slight in stature with light blond hair and eyes the color of mine. I envisioned her nervously sitting in her sun room, balancing the phone on her right shoulder, magazines strewn carelessly about on the couch cushions next to her.   After the conversation haltingly concluded, her lament remained in my mind.  "He's my baby brother."  I have two brothers.  I am the youngest.  The only girl.  My relationship with them is full of complexities.  I accept this fact with little regard to change it.  Therefore, while digesting the traumatizing blow to the fragile ecosystem of our family, I simultaneously wondered at the fact that despite my mother's age, she remains the protector. The defender.  The one who takes care of her brother when he trips and falls or is bullied at school.  The one who sobs with him over his child's grave.  The one who anxiously awaits news of his condition.  I absorb the small pieces of this and resist the larger ones.  The ones that imply change.  The ones that imply uncertainty. And I realize that within one millisecond of an event, everything isn't, anymore.

Newtown

"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then" ~Lewis Carroll

I wore my sweatshirt yesterday.  All day long. I tried to bury myself in the folds of the hooded material that was pulled tight over my head.  Anything to protect myself from the news.  From the Internet.  From the faces of the Connecticut children, brutally gunned down in their classrooms.  I felt heavy.  So heavy I could barely move my limbs.  My stomach lurched.  My brain became sluggish.  All I wanted was sleep.  Endless and mind numbing sleep.  Yet how could I be so cowardly as to give in to the demands of my mind and body?  I did not know the victims.  The touch of their hands.  The sound of their breaths.  The cadence of their voices.  Yet here I was. Lying in bed.  Begging for something, anything, to intervene.  And so the day progressed into night.  The only thing that changed was the light outside my bedroom window.  I pulled the hood even tighter over my head and closed my eyes, a growing anxiety became the ever present partner in my bed.  I awoke to the alarm, several minutes before it sounded.  I got up and walked the dog, lumbered into the shower and stood under the hot flow of a slow moving cascade of water.  And so my day began.  I returned to work. To the gentle smiles of my office mates whose eyes revealed the same hauntings as my own. Now the day is concluding.  In the concluding, I have started a blog.  Perhaps it's my attempt to reach beyond the emptiness that wraps around me like a vice.  I breathe in.  And out.  It's all I can accomplish.