Maya Angelou

Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic

experience in demoting even large adult blacks to psychological dwarfs.

I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.

We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

Hate often is confused. Its
Limits are in zones beyond itself.

The Traveler

Byways and bygone
And lone nights long
Sun rays and sea waves
And star and stone

Manless and friendless
No cave my home
This is my torture
My long nights, lone

Kin

FOR BAILEY

We were entwined in red rings
Of blood and loneliness before
The first snows fell

And every baby crying
Shame the blanket of my night
And all my days are dying

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.