How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton

bright cruciforms against the sky

especially in the ohs she uses, it’s a new gospel I hear …she’s laughing. a lo

since the poems are lyrical,

among the pines, to the snow forever falling and
the long dark bringing its constellations,

and the sky pouts back,

to black poets
just cause you don’t see me
don’t mean i aint there.
when you be together
reading
and being together
and you feel something soft
rubbing you just like sisterskin
don’t turn off please,
thats me.

you will be
dressed in blood
rise up
and wobble off
toward cavalry

another raccoon dead, his tail raised high
like a flagpole.

i have been hated for it,
laughed at,
i have cried, me and my
black yes.
affirmation.

running through virginia fields
will be again a dream.