Afro Images

(For Natalie)

She was dark and fine

with large African sunsets

for eyes.

You could see the whole world

in her eyes.

Her eyes reflected joy;

they mirrored the pain—

centuries of lash and lack

and bloodhounds and canebrakes and

cotton fields at dawn.

She saw landscapes of white cotton bolls,

cypresses and bayous,

red clay and sky high pines.

Her eyes tightened at her birthpains;

the giant Robeson and red-headed Malcolm

and the thunder-throated Martin

and all the unborn sons and daughters

who will spring from their bones.

Her eyes were prophets of past and present;

eons etched on her brown pupils.

But look deeper, much deeper—

for the future of our people is written

in this young girl’s eyes.