New Day Poem

                            for Walter H. Lively

By Melvin E. Brown

Walt's thumbs were green

& his fingers were thick vines;

that's why he was a vital & leafy part

of the lives of East Baltimore's poor.

He was always flinging blossoms into their windows

& teaching them how to be full of thorns

in their poverty, whenever they needed to.

Whenever politicians & bureaucrats came around,

the whole neighborhood would hide all the things

that Walt could do -- so that those things

would continue to grow. (Walt had always said

that certain kinds of people didn't believe

in the secret flowering of the ghetto.)

The neighborhood knew that Walt was

a part of their thriving, & they knew that

he was trying to change the nature of their lives

because his green thumbs & thick fingers

were always clinging to the walls

of some condemned building

that they called home.

I knew it too.

But the reason I loved him

was because, sometimes,

when I stood behind his blooming

I could see the seasons transforming.

Melvin E. Brown was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, Brown received his M.A. in 1977 to 1981. He was the editor of Chicory Magazine, a publication of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. he has also been a faculty member at Sojourner Douglass College. His first volume of poetry In the First Place was published in 1974. Most recently, his poetry appeared in In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African American Poetry.

Blue Notes & Blessing Songs
 (Liberation House,1995)

Reviews

Melvin follows the tradition: griot, storyteller, musician. His poems are straight, clear thinking. In the words of Etheridge Knight, he too "sees through stone." Celebrate this new good book.

--Lucille Clifton, Pulitzer Prize Nominee, author of The Book of Light

Ooh, baby, baby--Melvin E. Brown, at times, writes the way Smokey Robinson once sang. Brown's latest volume is a book of remembrances. It's a collection of poems "coated" with the blues and filled with a special kind of love.

--E. Ethelbert Miller, Director, African American Resource Center, Howard University

It ain't just poetry to me. I hear the codes for honest living, the quest to become a better human being. I hear the love of friendship and memory, and the love of memorable friendships. I feel the caring, the hurting, the loving, the healing, the hoping. It's the heart-to-heart that's really got a hold on me. Unh, unh, it ain't just poetry to me.

--Peter J. Harris, author of Hand Me My Griot Clothes: The Autobiography of Junior Baby