This week’s poem comes from the largely forgotten African American poet James Weldon Johnson whose book “God’s Trombones” takes as its task to preserve the language and cadence of the African American preaching tradition. The collection begins in a prayer for mercy and then moves through Biblical history to arrive at the final judgement, aContinue reading “40 Days of Mercy: Week 4”
Tag Archives: slavery
Boab
Upside-down-like, you bulb from earth – your beauty breaks in root-like branches. Spindly fingers reach to sky, gaunt and stretching, delicate, your certain trunk a monument, a stout and stolid testament to passing years, millennia. Shedding pods to paint; a home, yet prison; sacred; den for slaves – drawing, standing, reaching out – a signContinue reading “Boab”
On reading a biography of John Newton
I’d have lived on Clapham Green And played upon its soil; I’d have joined their century And burnt up slavery’s spoils. I’d have lived in Olney too And written hymns with men Whose poor hearts burnt with Gospel flame And kindled it with pen. But God has made me live today: The worldContinue reading “On reading a biography of John Newton”
The Consolations of Writing 