Phenomenal Woman

 Today, driving home from work, the radio announcer shared the news, and a deep indigo tear welled up in my soul. A woman who taught me the pride of beauty died today. The stride of my step, the curl of my lips are forever indebted to her. I spent many a solitary high school hour reading and re-reading her poem, until I’d memorized it and could stride down the street with joy in my feet, the sun of my smile beatifying the empty driveways, reciting it.

Earlier this year, I reread I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and pictured my students in her place at one or another chapter, myself wavering on their edges trying to guess and gauge and give. I sat on my southern porch and dipped into the child’s mind with a keen recognition. The selfhood she brought to it gave life to racist experiences far outside my own.

I drove along today, letting the radio’s appropriately chosen The Lark Ascending flitter through my emotions, musing on how a woman so many people have never met can have such a profound effect on their lives. The monolith of her personality emerges from her writing a hazy, solid purple triangle, as defined as any literary symbol of womanhood, jutting into meaning. So many writers lose themselves in social justice, a call to arms so strident it deafens the personal touch. May Angelou gave both. I love her for allowing me to find myself inside her writing and for teaching me of the outside.

Tomorrow my children will read:

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

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

I have faith that the children, too, will rise.