As National Poetry Month draws to a close, I thought I would share a poem from a newly discovered poet (Thanks, Kym!).

After reading a poem by Derek Walcott on Kym’s blog earlier this month, I check out an anthology of Derek’s poetry from the library and have been reading a poem or two a day during the month. I have enjoyed his works tremendously. He has given me a different perspective to look at things, which is always a very good thing.

Forty Acres
by Derek Walcott

     to Barack Obama

Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving –
a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,
an emblem of impossible prophecy: a crowd
dividing like the furrow which a mule has plowed,
parting for their president; a field of snow-flecked cotton
forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens
that the young plowman ignores for his unforgotten
cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch are a tense
court of bespectacled owls and, on the field’s receding rim
is a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him
while the small plow continues on this lined page
beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado’s black vengeance,
and the young plowman feels the change in his veins, heart, muscles, tendons,
till the field lies open like a flag as dawn’s sure
light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.

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