These are the words and images from some of the young women I've been teaching. I just took their lines (cleaned them up slightly) and arranged them into a poem.
If…
If I could be any color in the world
I would be green
Like the beautiful trees
In a quiet garden,
Where the birds fly above my leaves
And taste the flavor of freedom.
Green, the color of renewal,
Knowing something will be born.
I would be black
To absorb all other colors,
To absorb hatred, jealousy, bloodshed.
Black like the color of night,
To hide myself from strangers
Who want to enter my life.
I’d be the whispers
That float in the sky
To make the clouds shiver
With delight.
Or I could be yellow
Like the sunrise in the morning,
Something to give us hope,
To touch a heart full of darkness.
I would be the smell of earth
touched by rain.
The sound of that rain
When it is heard on my street,
Meaning I’ve arrived at my destination
After a long, hard journey.
I would be my father’s glasses
The ones he looks through
To see me growing day after day.
The glasses he holds carefully
And cleans with all his love.
His white t-shirt filling with color
When he says “Good morning, Beauty.”
I would be the sound of the wind
Traveling from place to place,
Seeing the world
Without anyone to stop me.
The sound of a book opening,
Giving knowledge.
Giving voice.
From Mr. Basil’s class
Written as a collaborative poem
February, 2009
With a little help from Elizabeth Thomas
Posts
a powerful piece
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