We all are inspired by someone…perhaps a famous athlete, actor, politician, or better yet, a parent. But for me, each and every day that I sit down to write, I think of one person that I most want to emulate… and that is my daughter. My amazingly creative daughter has more God given talent for writing than most people her age, or anyone for that matter. When she was little I saw it… a natural ability to tell cute little stories with full beginning, middle and ends. And then she began to really write, blowing away all of us around her with her profound thoughts and incredible vocabulary. Her thoughts were transferred onto a page with such pure honesty, that one couldn’t help but wonder if the person standing in front of us was the author, or was she so talented that she could write as another person altogether. Her first poem was published by Seventeen magazine while she was still in middle school. And since then, she has quietly hid her work in sketchbooks next to her bed or in a chest often unnoticed by anyone passing by. But I know they are there…full of her most inner thoughts and her most creative masterpieces… unseen for fear that they are not worthy of a reading. I don’t open them, of course, as a writer’s work is their’s alone… but every once in awhile she will send a text from college with an incredible saying or poem and I text back, “Who’s the author… it’s so beautiful.” Her answer still surprises me… “It’s me mom! Who’d you think???” I thought maybe Dickinson, Hughes… any of the greats… that’s right…she is GREAT. And so when she sent this poem during the Ferguson Riots, I thought that she had found some new poet, a new “modernist” if you will… and maybe she did… in herself. At twenty-one she managed to personify another person’s views so perfectly that she even had me fooled yet again. And although it was sent by text, and my formatting may be incorrect… I think you will understand it’s incredible message. I titled it… Missouri Streets:
Missouri Streets
They’re lynching us
to their trees,
with lead
and powder,
And it’s like
Granddad said:
The invisible man
has found his camera,
but these shouts sound louder
than a cry for justice.
We say
they turn us into
the shadow of monsters
and shake the
ground that
brings us water,
thirsting for more
to help
this protest
grow,
But we ain’t
got no water,
we aint got no
heat,
And we’re shaking to our
bones
In these Missouri streets.
This is why my daughter is my inspiration…a true wordsmith. I wish I could share more, but for now she let this one be seen… I hope it won’t be long before she let’s go of her most prized work and THEN, you will know why I want to grow up to be like her.
