I saw the most beautiful thing today. A woman was standing in front of me as I walked past, chatting with no one I knew. She had that dark, black black skin that Africans are so lucky to have. It was smooth and almost pearly and so lovely dark you felt as if you could reach your hand right into it and lose yourself. She had her hair shaven close with those pin-wheel curls hugging her skull and eyes pale to her skin, bright and fiery like a lions. Kissing lips and high cheeks that made her look as if she was smiling all the time. A person so worthy of a poem, I had not found. And I, with my pale freckle-flawed skin, my in-between eyes that cannot choose green or grey and often insist on being both, was completely and utterly enamored with her. Nothing about her was faked, pinched, poked, painted or dyed. She was a dark water with a smile just like sunshine. I wanted to touch that skin, to find if it was exactly what I thought it was. I wanted to talk to her, to find out the ideas she hid behind the hunter-hunger of those lion eyes. I wanted to smile at her, to see her face mirror the expression of my own, though hers a more perfect impression. She was wild and tamed and shy as the sky. I wanted to stop and tell her all of this. But I didn't. I stared slack-jawed at her and kept on walking. So here is my remedy to you, lion-eyed stranger, I want to give you a poem, for a poem is all I have to give.
Oh water-clear sunshine,
reflect from a shoulder
a dark one, a depth of heat
created by the bright
white light
a stand-up soap-box
a rebel in the Savannah grass
you the perfect pearl
the sea-man's boon
you the panther in the shade
graceful and smooth like a river-rock
you the most perfect child of Ra
gift to the sheep in the blue edged sky
you-a dream
a creation of slumber
for you,
you cannot be of this world.
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