Features

come and see me on the street corner 

down here in west berkeley 

see me howling in grief rage pain 

i don’t know what all my howling is 

because my grief rage pain blind me 

naked in my filthy matted dreadlocks 

yet we have had a marvelous symbiosis 

the black cashmere rising academic 

and the fallen silenced poet naked 

howling in grief rage pain 

the burnished panels and the discreetly 

deferential colleagues 

and the naked filthy one alone on the 

street corner, invisible to all who pass, 

joined through the years by grace, and love, 

and our children, and an enduring curiosity. . . 

Berkeley, August 1999