The photo above is “Rhythm of Life” taken by award-winning photographer Chester Higgins Jr.
A vision of an elder emerges. Face written with time and resilience- he still plays the sax on rainy evenings and flowered mornings. There is a song that plays in his head and it echoes beyond waters he has never seen, depths and spaces that only lineage remember. These are the utterances that were cached between the folds of his aging hands and released unto the atmosphere.
blues
dripping from the jagged,
rough, unembellished
ceilings. They sing no more lies
no more lies in the night. no more
tattered explanations for joyous sobbing.
let it happen. one more night
until the holes in the earth are filled. one
more fight until the sea consumes
itself and the indigo is permitted
to traverse on ground level.
you know what is so frustrating?
feeling all of these at once
prancing around you. teasing the upper
labyrinth into restless commotion. too many sentient
images, ideas, and all that you would
consider the fabric of life breaking in
or breaking through.
the heart is a volatile drum
set into activation by smiles, by dreams,
By words, by what the eyes choose
to savor and swallow whole
or swallow in pieces
to construct an eternal mosaic.
this is open wide fields of sunflowers
that can make the sane cry
this is a room saturated with
piano rounds and chords- pictures moving,
trembling, against the wooden walls.
this is taking a step into the Atlantic
and feeling the hands of all those who
came before who joyously leaped into
the tumultuous oblivion –
having reclaimed autonomy
even in death.
© AfroetryWorks 2019
