Rest in Peace, Maya Angelou
by beanalreasa
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
~~~~
I awoke this morning to the sad news via Tweets and various messages on my newsfeed that Maya Angelou had died.
Within moments of reading the above words, I found myself unable to articulate exactly why I feel such a sense of loss.
Meanwhile, my friend, Sarah Sloane, upon hearing the news, put her feelings succinctly, thus:
“No…no. Losing Maya Angelou feels like losing my loving, empowering aunt, the one who told me that my soul had wings.”
Yes, that, Sarah, I agree with you.
Maya Angelou was exactly that.
She was an amazing writer, teacher, and activist certainly, but she was so much more than that to me.
Her words inspired me – in the truest sense of the word ‘inspired’ – and her poetry and essays carried me through some of the darkest hours while I was growing up.
I remember when my father had collected a huge cardboard box full of paperbacks and college textbooks that had been left behind in the dormitories during the summer remodel of Wellesley College in 1984. (The contractor company that he’d worked for assumed that the crew would just throw away any and all contents of the dorm rooms that were slated for remodeling, but my father has always had difficulty throwing away books of any kind.)
So that’s how I ended up with a dog-eared copy of her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and her poetry collections, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diie.., and Still I Rise.
I don’t know if that’s exactly what my father would have intended, but I spent that summer, sitting under the back porch, readingreadingreading about the evocative power of love, grief, pain, and spiritual truth that also touched upon race, gender, and the intricacy of human relationships.
And so began my lifelong love of her poetry, her writing, and her keen, unflinching eye that always focused on the humanity in history. And whether her unflinching eye focused on the good or the bad of humanity, in the end, it seemed to me that the gist of her words always concerned the importance of moving forward, moving upward, toward the exposure of truth, and the revelation of love.
And I needed that in that difficult summer of 1984, when I was 13, and struggling mightily with myself.
I count many of her poems as inspiring, but here are three that I find especially so:
Beloved,
In what other lives or lands
Have I known your lips
Your Hands
Your Laughter brave
Irreverent.
Those sweet excesses that
I do adore.
What surety is there
That we will meet again,
On other worlds some
Future time undated.
I defy my body’s haste.
Without the promise
Of one more sweet encounter
I will not deign to die.
~~~
Seven Women’s Blessed Assurance
Preacher, Don’t Send Me
Preacher, Don’t Send me
when I die
to some big ghetto
in the sky
where rats eat cats
of the leopard type
and Sunday brunch
is grits and tripe.
I’ve known those rats
I’ve seen them kill
and grits I’ve had
would make a hill,
or maybe a mountain,
so what I need
from you on Sunday
is a different creed.
Preacher, please don’t
promise me
streets of gold
and milk for free.
I stopped all milk
at four years old
and once I’m dead
I won’t need gold.
I’d call a place
pure paradise
where families are loyal
and strangers are nice,
where the music is jazz
and the season is fall.
Promise me that
or nothing at all.
~~~
Rest in peace, dear Maya Angelou.
It is with tears in my eyes that I thank you. and wish you safe journey.
May all promises be kept.
❤
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