Wanting
I
The crape myrtle tree refuses to bloom this year I too, will not bloom
Brown girl, unadorned and true imagine her, beautiful.
II Deep and ruffled hearts are really all that matter when summer comes due
Wanting and waiting bare limbs shiny with desire small winds whisper close.
III The world is always falling the story is in our scars
Many flowers fade before they ever open what choice do we have?
Where I’m Coming From: For Montrose Street
A little street full of little houses
12 in a row on either side
close enough for love and thunder
head heart hip toe.
Marble steps scrubbed with pride and purpose
stoop sitting when there was time to pass
double-dutch and nonsense singing
bare feet slapping broken ground.
Talking loud and saying nothing
cold beer in the barrel out back
huckster man calling wares from a wagon
number man pushing fifty cent dreams.
Common walls uncommon people
family by blood and circumstance
Philadelphia negroes
up from slavery
city country country city.
They wore the mask, the glove the apron
they wore the smiles and paid the price
they coaxed roses through the concrete
hand hope fist tears.
This is where I’m coming from
a people, a place that time has taken
but I still daydream double-dutch
and hear the thunder
in my sleep.
Baby Picture: For Little B
Maybe
that expression on your face
mouth tilted, all agog
infant eyes awakened, wild
is not a smile at all
but pure surprise
that you have landed here
with us
in this dominion
this peculiar geography.
Look closer Little B
look again through the veil
of your staring starry eyes
we too are strangers here
wandering this wilderness
carrying blood memory song.
Tell me
did we catch you traveling light
shifting realms, and disparate dimensions
on your way to some other plane?
did we lure you with our spirit tones
psalms and lamentations
that flow like ancient water
from our tongues?
Oh, Little B
we have named you
under the endless sky
stay awhile
wander with us.
none of us know the way.
Bernardine (Dine) Watson is a nonfiction writer and poet who lives in Washington, D.C. She has written on social policy issues for major foundations, nonprofit organizations and for the Washington Post Health and Science section and She the People blog. Dine’s memoir: Transplant won the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for nonfiction and appeared on National Public Radio’s 2023 list of Books We Love. Dine was selected by Poets & Writers as one of their “5 over 50” debut authors for 2023. Her poetry has been published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon/Mid-Atlantic Review and Sanctuary, published by Darkhouse Books. In 2023, two of her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Dine is a member of the 2015 class of the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities Poet in Progress Program and the 2017 and 2018 classes of the Hurston Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers’ Workshop for Poetry.