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  Poetry: Heritage (For Walter Leonard)

Poetry: Heritage (For Walter Leonard)

Landscape Inside You by Rebecca Chaperon

Poetry from Nikki Giovanni's new book, A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter

The folk here

Are old

There are wheel

Chairs and people

Struggling

To push them

There are sad

Eyed people looking

Up from beds they

Cannot stretch out

In

And some simply cannot

Move their heads

All will become something precious

Sapphires … Emeralds … Rubies which

Will be discovered

By other explorers who

Will polish and shape

The stones

And we will wear them

Never knowing

Whose loved one

We have

Embraced

I am the first person in my family to be born in a hospital—so it’s easy to see how much I was teased. Yet there were things like Grandmother’s silver spoons or snuggling under MamaDear, Cornelia Watson’s (who was the first free child born of slave parents) quilt until it literally fell apart that let me know I, too, was a part of the family. I wear a ring that was given to me by a nun whom I dearly loved. I’ve had it since I was graduated from the 8th grade. I think about how all life-forms evolve and how important it is to remember that we, too, will keep changing. One day we will be discovered by another life-form. I can only hope they will feel the love of the love. That’s what my Heritage is. —Nikki Giovanni

“Heritage” is from the new book A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter by Nikki Giovanni. Copyright 2017 by Nikki Giovanni. Published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. Reprinted by permission.

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