(FOR THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN)
Why does no one ever laud me?
whose sable hands calmed troubled seas?
My roots wrenched from the earth’s dark bowels,
Daughters of song perched on my leaves.
Yet society applauds the white bough of the bleached birch tree,
Is it because you do not boast the ebony-hued bark like me?
Induced to shade your hallowed ground,
Your tributaries to follow,
Under your winds my branches fold,
My trunk too often made hollow. . . .
Pruning my putrefied branches,
Yes, for the whole world to behold,
I will reclaim lost saffron shores
of the River Nile of my soul!
-MAXINE E. THOMPSON 1989