Poem for Langston

Abstract

At nineteen what did you know of rivers?Of life's ups and downs, of green currents that led to the open sea.To brilliantly bide time among people not your kind,yet using your gifts of charm and friendship to distractthose who could make your life much harsher.You were always the bright face, handsome, young manwho knew how to talk to people; to make a poem out of themost common of elements; going past limits of race.What did you know of rivers? How to navigate wildrush of circumstances that would change your path in life.What to do with the anguish of the generation before you?To take whatever life threw at you and put it to use.You were always meandering from shore to shore; sometimeswildly thrashing about in currents not of your own making.You moved countless times from your mother to grandmother, fromMissouri to Kansas, to Ohio across so many state lines andeven to Mexico, twice to visit your father. Carrie and Jamespulled you between them hoping to make their dreams yours.Why not go to Europe, study to be an engineer and take over the land?Why not get work, any job to support your mother?Penning poems in your free time; lollygagging, staring out a window.Keen on writing, your dreams were beyond their imagination.What could you know of rivers? Growing up a few milesfrom the Kansas river, its muddy banks a daily view.You lived constantly moving and flowing overrocks and turns in the river as you learned to becomeeverything; student, bus boy, sailor, fellow traveler, reporter,going from screenwriter, poet, translator to Harlem royalty.You went everywhere Russia, Spain, Cuba, Ghana,Nigeria and Asia to become yourself. What did youknow of the Lawrence or the Missouri rivers?Of making your own life of letters and adventure.