Poetry

"I Don't Dream of Poets"
(for Gwendolyn Brooks, 1917-2000)
By Ellen Wright
If I did dream of poets, I'd dream
of Gwendolyn Brooks whose name
is the same as my mother's,
and she was second mother to me;
first black, female poet I loved.
 
I walked the streets of Bronzeville in my head,
met all the characters in the neighborhood
like the unforgettable Satin Legs Smith,
and later The Bean Eaters (dwellers of tenements),
and the seven doomed schoolboys,
cool pool players at the Golden Shovel,
and The Mother whose choice I cannot forget--
grieving children she got but did not get.
 
I follow in the poet's footsteps the way
I never did my mother's. Weeks before her death,
she signed books for me. That day, I watched her
grace as she signed for hours, signed too long outdoors,
draped in a blanket—giving gifts to strangers
like a Bronzeville mother feeding hungry children.
 
I wasn't the only one who loved her. She was poet mother
to us all. She loved us all.