Blooming in the Flower City

Dedication:

Dedicated to the generations of freedom fighters and abolitionists who worked to save Black lives along the Genesee River. To the people, remembered and forgotten, who implored all who would listen that the reality of equity could only be offered as a tool when everyone is seen as equal. To the individuals who have impacted my life since I moved here in the fall of 2014, you are the seeds that bloom daily in my heart, mind and soul. This is my ode to the city on the Genesee, where Black folks floated upstream and yonder to be free. I hope that my story of reckoning—a story of Blackness, Queerness and personhood—helps others name their own liberation journeys. 

Author's Note:

The writing prompts in this piece, following the poems and accompanied by musical selections of native Black Rochesterians, are here to help guide you in your own reckoning. Come in to your own understanding of how Black bodies have survived physical bondage while continuously moving towards prosperity. In your own moments of self-reflection, continue to ask yourself, “Where am I finding my healing?” It’s a question I ask myself often; a question that warrants earnest reckoning with race, history and place.

Preface

Living in Rochester has taught me that each season plays an important role in healing. Its grueling winters encourage meditation, a reminder that spring brings expansion. Summer’s warm embrace gives way to a sense of freedom and purpose. And fall brings a message of revolution—that all living things must learn to shed and grow anew. Rochester taught me that healing is circular, not linear, and that every day presents a new opportunity to bloom, spread, shed and reflect.

A reckoning, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is “the action or process of calculating or estimating something.” We have to deprogram ourselves from negative self-talk against ourselves and our community. This call to freedom and liberation is not new, as we’ve always run along the edges of the earth where water and sky meet. Collectively, there has been a plea to destroy a history of self-hatred built upon centuries of degradation as the earth’s most wretched. Many fail to realize that Mother Earth and Father Time have always catered to the needs of their children.

The proverb “They tried to bury us, but did not recognize we were seeds,” beams from a billboard on West Main Street in Rochester, New York. I see it as a calling for growth, for a personal and collective reckoning. A harvesting of one’s own talents and a concomitant planting and nurturing of the talents of our brothers, sisters and cultural family.

A seed—by which I mean each and every life, including yours—has everything inside of it that is required for growth. All it needs is the right environment. Rich soil. Abundant water and sunshine. Tender care. The gifts of growth. I believe we can provide that right habitat for one another. So take what you need from this offering and remind yourself to stay light throughout the journey.

PART I: The Soil and the Seedlings

The small town of Rochester, New York, formerly known as Rochesterville, has cradled and created space for myriad souls who long for its former grandeur as a “freedom city” to return. Local Black people, freedom-minded civic leaders and everyday allies for the cause have shaped its history as a living, breathing city of liberation. In some ways, they also changed how we view equality and equity for all mankind.

To begin, a story about Rochester’s historic soils. The city has been considered a freedom city since the late 1700s, long before the arrival of famous orator, author and abolitionist Frederick Douglass found himself in the bosom of its sweltering summer days and frigid winter nights. It is here that the last stop of the Underground Railroad in America, Kelsey’s Landing, exists just a few short miles from the east side of Rochester, now home to a substantial food desert. Where once the promise of refuge and passion for human rights merged, Rochester is now a lost and forgotten city whose despair has been woven into the very soil of its stolen land.

In the early fall of 2014, I traveled the back roads of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Greenville, South Carolina, headed north. I had recently celebrated my emancipation from a marijuana possession charge borne of my trust in folks who I later learned were not trustworthy. For over a year, I squirmed in a courthouse chair, navigating the obstacle course of the legal system rather than simply take the offered plea deal. Eventually, the charge was overturned; my freedom restored.

But in the meantime, all acceptances to graduate degree programs had been rescinded because of the possession charge. So, my vindication became my motivation for pursuing a graduate degree in Higher Education, a space that for centuries barred its doors from those who were not white men. My goal was to obtain my doctorate degree in anticipation of one day becoming the first openly queer president not of a majority institution, but of a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). I understood that engaging with whiteness would always be a reality. I did not have to move to Rochester to know that my southern accent and southerly charm would solidify how people, particularly in the field of education, would view my intersecting identities. It was here, in the classroom, that all the stories of trust and discernment of my southern elders met. 

My dream of leaving my small southern town for big city lights was finally realized when I found myself 826 miles from the red clay that birthed me. The illuminated sky I saw that first eve has enlightened my journey over the last seven years. It fostered spiritual calm, like a renewing breath.

Like so many others who decided to explore new realities in their 20s, I pursued higher education, a realm that has been heralded by scholars as one of few methods for liberating Black and other marginalized bodies. I was so open to new opportunities that often my discernment became muddled by my wish to connect with all in a space where one can sense the years of pain and turmoil seeped into the soil. But I had no other option but to take the leap. Uncalculated, unsure, surreal.

My first night led me away from my sleeping family with my heart fully open to the journey of exploration. As I entered the city of Rochester along the fabled Genesee River, I saw a sea of rainbow lights beaming from downtown, reflected in the water. I wasn’t aware yet that this dark, vast body of water would ripple and bubble over into my life, becoming my sacred writing location for the next seven years.

The neighborhood nearby, called the Corn Hill District, is one of the state’s first interracial neighborhoods. It's the intermediate destination between the inner city and the 19th Ward, which has manifested a multitude of Black educators, lawyers, doctors and other professionals and is home to one of the first Black-owned and operated radio stations, WDKX 103.9. Just a bridge away are the prominent neighborhoods of South Wedge and Alexander Park, two spaces where orator Frederick Douglass once resided—so much Black history in this “northern” city. 

As a youngster, I marveled at stories of family members who left home in search of self. Most of these narratives reflect a time where communication with family was scarce; as quickly as they left down the dirt road, it seemed they were returning. 

Unlike our enslaved ancestors’ fearsome journey upstate via the underground railroad, I was able to enjoy my border crossing without any worries about what might lie ahead. My feet were layered in the prayers and tears of family and friends, guided by the steps taken long before me. 

This first poem is dedicated to our ancestors, who chased freedom for four centuries so that we could have the autonomy to claim our own.

My recommended accompanying song is “Geechee Joe” by Cab Calloway.

Running to Freedom

Mama told me to be safe boy
They not gone treat you kind
And be wary of those strangers
That befriend you in a fast pace
Cause them darling are the ones
That will leech you to death

Papa said be brave cause men cry
But they do it in shadows and behind
Walls and veils and dive into labyrinths 
That paralyze and dismantle the reality
So freedom looks real lovely
While liberation is the grieving of things
Never allowed to breathe the full
Extension of that Lily blooming into 
Fullness
Saturating the ground with yellow-stained tears

My Beaux the bravest of them all
I stood in their shadow breathing 
Their courage and engulfed
In rage as to why my chains were still here
Lunging at my heart as if
Those thousands of miles couldn’t
Sever me free

My brotha told me my light will shine 
And hurt will still be present
To push through the translucent night sky 
That dry pushes in my lungs as I cling
And reach higher and higher
In a last moment to recognize that 

I’m breathing 

That I’m alive

That I’m rooted

That I’m peace

That I’m love

That I’m light 

That I’m whole

That I’m tears of joy 

That I’m sorrow-filled nights 

That I’m doing “okay” and okay is fine

That I’m near my truth

That I’m rededicated to truly exist 

That I’m a farmer planting seeds

Hoping for growth where there is the most need

In community and in self, can’t save them others 

Unless I catch my breath.

Oh no, breathing boy. This journey may be lonely

But faith and hope guide
Your path and healing lights that 
Darkness that trauma think it’s going to overshadow
When peace and harmony ride into view
Clearing paths and reminding you of your truth

Only one can guide your path 
And young cat that’s you

Prompt: Take a moment to reflect on the things you’ve denied yourself—be it joy, opportunity, peace, etc. And then ask yourself why. What people, pressures or institutions pushed you outside of yourself? Consider how these things might be the questions. Now, come to the present. What are things you are running from? Be honest with yourself. What forces are pushing you away from the spaces you may thrive into, and into the spaces you feel you cannot survive? Have you planted any new seeds recently? Have you rooted yourself in any new gardens? Or taken the time to detangle roots that no longer serve you? When was the last time you opened your arms and just ran, openly embracing new possibilities? Pay homage to your journey; when you’re ready, I’ll still be here, tilling and sowing.

PART II: Sprouts and Stems

For my first two years in Rochester, I lived in the historic 19th Ward and Beechwood neighborhood. My godmother, Cocoa, lived nearby in a centralized community close to the university. Her home served as a safe haven for me. She invited me into her home and then into her family. From her small porch, I could hear her bellow to my nieces and nephews when it was time to come in as the street lights came on. I felt in her home a sense of community.

Growing up, my parents taught my brother and me that taking care of our community was a part of our Chrisitian duty. Cocoa did that for me. She became a stable figure in my life and has continued to be for the past seven years. Though I was not a motherless child, per se, I came to Rochester lost. And in Cocoa, I found home again. I began to treasure the simple things. The way her gentle hands retwisted and styled my locs like the art they were. The way we communicated about the expansiveness of Blackness. 

Cocoa’s home was one of the first places I learned what safety outside of parental protection looked like. She and I often spoke about my wandering spirit—how I spent my formative 20s in Rochester searching for love, for myself, and for some greater purpose. Cocoa was responsible for me finding my way to the Freedom School of Rochester; she encouraged me to find Black male educators who would accept me wholly. 

To me, the Freedom School, a summer and after-school “literacy and cultural enrichment” program, serves as a monument to liberated minds. The program engages youth struggling within typical high school classroom settings and offers them the opportunity to study and work in a space holistically and uniquely focused on them and their needs. The work revealed to me that the true depths of a Black educator reaches far beyond their duties or official titles within institutional realms. At the Freedom School, I felt as if I stepped into a network of healers who use language to heal and to transform one's present and future.

Sadly, my experience there also made me realize that the intrinsic aims I held within education would remain distant as long as education gave cover to individuals who feigned interest and concern for those they served, but whose egos impeded honest work. It is in this dishonest space that I met a northern white abolitionist who befriended Black and brown youth to help them excel. This woman, enacting what I later viewed as a white savior complex, fed me the realities of hope and opportunity. But in practice, she used her tenure to position herself to write about narratives she could never truly understand, and she silenced the energies that called for accountability in return. I soon received a phone call informing me that my involvement in the project would cease—that it was neglectful towards the community. Imagine being told, as a Black educator and wellness practitioner, that your desire to explore the emotional depths and ranges of Black minds was harmful—by a white educator, no less. That to champion Black healing and prosperity meant to hinder her success. Hanging up the phone, I vowed to continue my work. And like a vine, I kept growing and connecting, cultivating relationships and learning new ways to extract beauty in the lives of those who were always taught they were unworthy.

For generations, we have been told that inclusion and integration are parallel to loyalty and comradery. But we cannot silence ourselves and our healing hearts. We must never give way to spaces that are meant for Black healing but hold no space for reckoning with Black pain.

This next poem is dedicated to those of us who have planted our seeds in poisoned soils—who have surrendered trust to false promises and selfish gardeners. May you water yourself anyways; may you bloom. 

My recommended accompanying song is “Discernment” by JahPhoenix.

Porcelain Smiles

That white grin just be grinning 
Y’all white nigga still benefiting off of
A Chester cat grin 
Handing them freedom papers
Knowing that this Blackness 
Extra dose of C₁₈H₁₀N₂O₄

Cause damn it I just know these white niggas
Not playing me

Her smile was as gentle as white women I’ve known before
I held her regard as positive cause these 
Other bodies of love led me to her
To her presence 
If I had to think
It would be of white saviors false prophecies 
See the ear her soft words
The arm felt her extension of gratitude 
But the eye

The eye saw a white grin it had known before
Their friends not recognizing the dangers
Of trusting white grins cause those same
“Saviors” came from these same soils
Labeled abolitionist
Setting niggas free and still holding 
All the master keys to 
Tell them niggas

“You ain’t no winna boy”

“Gal, you still a Nigga”

“Ha did you think you’d be better than me”

“Nigga we want you free but not freer than me”

I sat at the ancestors’ tomb 
Father Frederick telling me to carry my little freedom tune
Breathe
Eat and be nourished
Your strength will fade and you’ll still know 
Clarity of senses and depth
You’ll know freedom
But its path remains in the gaze of them calcium creatures 
Ghostly and vastly all the same
Never trust that white nigga grin and
You’ll see the realities of 
Darkness
Despair
Death

And in that death, you’ll find spaces to be reborn
Over and over again 

Prompt: Take a moment to reflect on an individual who broke your trust within a white space. How do you reckon or have you reckoned with pouring yourself into systems that ultimately failed you? Take a minute to put yourself in the boots of the gardener. Write down the tenets of your garden. What is important to your garden? How do you nurture it, give it everything it needs to thrive? Also write down a plan for how you’ll identify and remove invasive species in order to ensure sustainable growth. Once you’ve let go of those things that limit your growth, come back here to continue to bloom.

PART III: Budding

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” - James Baldwin. 

My first two years living in Rochester were spent becoming a community member. I’ve long believed and told students that the strongest and most reciprocal collegiate education you can get within any community can only come from investing in, getting to know, and nurturing that community. In Rochester, for example, it is imperative that we try to contextualize and understand the enslavement of negro bodies and the residual effects post-traumatic slave syndrome have on the emotional wellbeing of family, commmunity and self.

To be more proactive about subverting these internalized communal and intrapersonal traumas, I found myself often dancing to Black Queer artists and exploring liberation outside of day-to-day life. Queerness, like Blackness, had at one time been prosecuted. So standing in both my Blackness and my Queerness, I was often sobered that my identity could render such hatred. 

It was challenging for me to concede that even though one may be loved or appreciated for their cultural nuances, they still have to overcome the lasting impact of decades of communal hate, as well as the internalized self-harming narratives this hate produces over time. It struck me that I am still ridding my body, mind and soul off the asphyxiating fumes that have long-filled my lungs and taken my breath from me. One can’t erase images of Black bodies swaying in the breeze, like the “Strange Fruit” Billie Holiday and Nina Simone sang about, police officers wielding water hoses so powerful they severed skin, or more recent images of officers kneeling on necks and literally choking the life from Black bodies. 

Today, Black and brown students are attempting to generate more space for themselves at home, school and within the broader community. They’ve taken their wellbeing entirely into their own hands—because their spirits depend on it, because systems are not yet producing safe spaces. Thus, providing nourishment to local youth became my ultimate priority. My reckoning with racially violent systems revealed the lifelong need for educators to heal, as to ensure that the violence we endure, the violence our ancestors endured, ends with us. Perhaps this is the true purpose of education for Black bodies?

When we do the hard work of unearthing the genesis of our pain, it’s important to ask ourselves if we also played a role in causing it. Have we even forgiven ourselves in another role? Have we catalyzed the harm we cause to ourselves and others? This is what reckoning looks like.

Auntie Zora once whispered to us, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” For too long, I was silent about my pain, subduing it so deep I didn’t always recognize it as pain. But my reckoning with race has meant excavating all the things I suppressed—watering my seeds, calling my fullness and wholeness into fruition.

Black Womxn, mothers, trans and femme Black Queer bodies— this was the community of gardeners that helped me find my way to self-love and self-actualization. I unleashed the part of me that always constrained my Blackness. And like many other Black Queer artists, I struggled with what comes first: to be Queer or Black? But instead of choosing, I learned to embrace and champion myself wholly.  

Suddenly, my world began to expand. I learned about spaces like the MOCHA Center, whose work focuses on creating access to safety, or the Avenue Black Box, a Black Queer-owned theatre project that seeks to transform the realities for young Black poets and sponsors evening soirees for Black liberators, artists, Queer bodies and community. Or my godmother’s Cocoa’s Creations Beauty Salon on Dr. Samuel McCree Way where I perched many a night writing graduate school papers under a hair dryer with my edges braided and twisted like the roots of the Underground Railroad that ended here. Open studios across Rochester where Black bodies would dance for hours. These beautiful Black spaces preserve the legacy of Rochester’s understated impact in the fight for freedom.

Before reading this next poem, think about the last time you existed in Blackness so pure and unapologetic. Bop the accompanying track, close your eyes, and just dance. Imagine, if you can, what liberation feels like.

My recommended accompanying song is “Boogie 2Night” by Tweet.

The Function

Rising through and ripping through tunnels my
soul began to ponder.
As that realization one has when they begin to smell the wind in their body
Those old negro spirituals settle in our bones
Making us bend and buck differently cause pain life’s misguided left hook landed on our hearts and breaths
Stealing babies and the innocent essence of rebirth between souls connecting in newness
That wombs have not birthed 
Only to have accidental wounds and scars burst open by gentle loving
Hands.
They ran
To freedom and liberation 
Digging in soil that would just as much 
Rather them suffocate from the weight of 
Insecurities it’s redesigned as resources
To fend hopelessness but
You hoped we wouldn’t grow and
Now the seeds overflow into gardens of
abundance cause the root
began to soak in dark night coverings
That no prayers could manifest 
The sanctioning of hearts and alliances 
On that note, death equals no freedom
unless liberated from self 
The gatekeepers, healers, downtrodden, seekers, 
elders and youth, politicians and herb dealers
The world seemed to collide and find itself at a standstill
in the Sea of bodies that had found 
shelter 

Prompt: Where do you get your healing from? What encourages you to find spaces that can support you as you process and release trauma and replace it with healing? To combat the often-grey Rochester skies, I often ask myself the following questions. If you’d like, take a few moments to reflect on them.

What would be in your overgrown garden?

What tools might you use?

How are you tending to yourself while in the garden?

What truth lies within your soil?

PART IV: In Full Bloom

As a Black Queer educator, my ethos was to support Black undergraduate students in an effort to find a deeper sense of self. Along the way, I came to see that acceptance and success in much of higher education would partially mean moving toward whiteness and further from my Blackness, a shift I would not be willing to sacrifice myself for. 

Then, in the winter of 2019, a major shift occurred that enabled me to settle in my voice and become the educator I wanted to be. Within one week, I left my doctoral program, flew to Long Beach to attend the Social Justice Training Institute and received a scholarship to earn my first of many yoga teacher training certifications. 

I also lost my grandfather, who had been a pivotal early figure in helping me understand my personhood. There is a silencing of transformational energy that takes place when such intergenerational connections are lost.

When my grandfather was in his 20s, he—like me—left his home and traveled for a short time in search of purpose. My freedom journey in Rochester helped me find healing spaces that my grandparents prayed their legacies would reach.

I recall the moment I received the call about Pop Pop’s passing. It was the first day of the Social Justice Training Institute, and I fell into a nebulous, isolated state. I sat quietly in the unfamiliar space and contemplated where to run. Later, standing in front of my apartment, as tears formed in my eyes, a gentle rain began to shower down, swaying me gently and holding me close. Death reminded me that day, and reminds us often, of a powerful truth. That one day we, too, will cease bearing fruit, but that we will always live on in the seeds we’ve planted and the soils we’ve nourished along the way.

Maybe this is part of reckoning, too? To come to terms with and embrace that our lives and legacies will be defined by the generations that follow—that to labor only for the fruits we’ll bear in our lifetime is to fail the garden. That liberation, the moral subversion of centuries of trauma and decay, is a hopeful harvest that warrants generations of action.

Rochester is a city where, for generations, Black people have found comfort and safety—people like Asa Dunbar, Frederick Douglass, Frank Stewart, Beatrice Amaza Howard, Kathryn Green Hawkins and famed choreographer Garth Fagan. I have embraced its deep legacy of healing and transition, while also holding the unique challenges of navigating Blackness in a city and educational system that has redlined the hopes and dreams of Black youth. 

This poem is for the sons and daughters and grandchildren of our Black forebears, who created  comforting spaces that reminded us to curl within, and breathe.

My recommended accompanying song is “Quiet Storm” by Jimmy Highsmith.

Pop Pop’s Lap

Crawling up the tower 
To sit perched all grand and mighty
On the top of two
Strong knees that have bent to shape
A throne for grand and great, grandchildren
A booming youthful voice
A gentle warm smile
The laughter that warmed hearts 
As it echoed down the single hallway
Recalling memories of Jim Crow
While teaching his future what it means 
To be Black, carefree, loving and hopeful
In a world 
That despises Black prosperity 
His hands cradling future generations to 
Slumber as they found magic in his stories and
They found peace in his pocket
Where soft peppermints laid 
Nestled for the next little fingertips to 
Find 
Lost dreams, revived 
Plum trees and collard greens
Pickup trucks with tiny smiles along 
Bumpy back roads
To oak church pews
Bellowing and raising hymns of
Beautiful mornings in another life 
Songs of the southern hummingbird
As quickly as it arrives 
And continues to carry melodies on 

Prompt: 
When was the last time you reckoned with your healing? Not of religion or spirituality, but of the spirit? 

Take a moment to draw a five-petal flower. Make the flower large enough to write in. Place your name in the middle. Next, write the things that keep you grounded and rooted in the soil. Think about your physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and professional well-being and the positive and negative feelings in each dimension. Write down the things you hope to keep. What will keep this flower growing? What will help it flourish?

PART V: The Garden Effect

In 1975, Ebony magazine sparked a national conversation about yoga for Black bodies. Civil Rights leaders such as Dr. Angela Davis, singer Freda Payne, baseball star Willie Davis and others began to practice yoga and meditation while imprisoned, becoming in tune with their bodies, hearts and minds while enduring hardship. I believe yoga is a practice that eliminates the detritus of systematic oppression from the ideal of self-empowerment, love and grace. It recognizes that the two—systematic oppression and self-empowerment—cannot co-exist.

For Black and brown bodies around the world, most spaces will never be safe spaces. I challenge us, instead, to discern ways to create brave spaces within ourselves. For years, yoga seemed a white practice exclusive to Black bodies, like so many other social activities. But we must free Black minds from the assumption that their liberation is dependent on white acceptance and white appeasement. 

The concept of the garden is an apt framework for Rochester. The city, when embracing the fullness of one’s Liberated Black self, becomes alive. If willing to look, one will find a community of activists and healing souls that have been waiting to embrace the likes of you. Yoga 4 a Good Hood, created by Black Womxn to cultivate an environment of protection for Black yogis, became a safe haven for my body. It was a place where I could release decades of trauma that plagues my blood and bones. 

A flow began to occur—a magnetic surge that reminded me of home. Country dirt roads. Wild plums dropping from trees. Plucking honeysuckles off church bushes near. I was reminded of myself here, of the Black collective, a body that has been harmed but does not mean harm. 

For a summer and winter, I marched with the new generation of Black liberationists. Standing on the dais at MLK Park, I invited people to gently find space in their bodies and close their eyes. The old negro spiritual, “This May Be the Last Time,” fell from my lips. A crowd of more than 500 ceased to speak. Black, Brown, white—young and old. The moment you find your own power source, your truth, where fears subside, you can lead others in their breath. I felt connected to Rochester in that moment, to the confident stillness that can only be attributed to one’s true alignment with past, present and future. I finally understood that to help others heal meant first finding the willingness and grace within myself to surrender entirely to my own healing. 

I became a yoga instructor to support the students who still face the struggles of their ancestors, not yet able to find the chain, much less break it. The power of yoga has allowed me to connect with a plethora of students from diverse backgrounds and with a variety of abilities to steward a community where all who seek healing can do so—whether self-understanding or simply a moment to breathe. 

Writing this now is a part of that healing journey, another step in my liberation. Black youth have always been silenced—by teachers, their imaginations too vast for the containers we’ve always tried to put them in. Or by police and other abuses of power, who hide vitriol behind words like fear. Silenced by jaded elders who believe that to question is to disrespect generations of tradition—even when said traditions uphold oppression. This is why we must continue to name our truths.  

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains. 
- Assata Shakur

It is important to remember that a seed needs to crack for its roots to grow—that when we feel broken, our bodies may be preparing for a spring blossom. 

The headlines of Daniel Prude’s death reverberated over the very same river that generations ago slaves traveled to in search of freedom. The irony and tragedy of it is haunting, and it cracked something in so many of us. But in that brokenness, I found myself hosting yoga sessions at homes of fellow activists, seeking moments of rest and relaxation from pepper spray bullets. I found myself spending nights dancing down dark avenues and claiming my joy on the concrete in front of lines of white officers turning Rochester over to reveal its still pink racial underbelly. Together, we blasted WDKX 1039, named after Frederick Douglas, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, dancing until earth opened and sky cracked.

Our efforts resulted in the establishment of a Police Accountability Board and, most importantly,   the catalyzation of a reckoning for all Black liberationists in the city to begin to connect, address our traumas and bloom fully into power and healing, together. And so, this final poem is to all of the freedom fighters whose spirits soar to provide space for All Black Lives to matter. It takes gardeners, lilacs and dandelions alike to keep these soils alive. This is the spirit of Rochester. A city rich in history often forgotten, a place where history and reality continue to build Black bodies from the ground up. A forever blooming city. May we flourish together.

My recommended accompanying song is “Be Gentle” by Danielle Ponder.

Ode to the Genesee

The rain today felt like
Old mist running and seeping
Like the blood in my veins 
Saxophone and Trumpets blaring gently
As a nighttime lullaby cradling my
Breath to slumber 
The gateway in the distance 
Lit by foggy stars
That shown the path 
Laid and beaten by barefooted feet
Horse hooves chasing after
Worn and weary
The smell of freedom ever so present
Still distant 
You hear their songs
The smell of their fear
And then the gentle release 
See when your body feels home
You become more at ease
More naive
Stronger as the years begin to fade
Creating new memories day by day
Finding liberation in every 
Fashion and way
You become rooted and begin 
To extend into new depths
You begin to bloom and recognize that
the garden and the gardener are both art 
And creations that need to be replenished
In all four seasons, we till and we toil
We give into spaces built of both
Stone and soil
Wondering what fruit will bear from it all
Pieces of me been sitting on this space
Just praying something would change
And other parts are jittering so much
It seems that at least once daily I lose control 
Of self and breath in this mind-body and flesh
I mentally escape to a tree in a 
Garden that doesn’t exist
The small whispers and gentle nudges the wind 
Lifts me 
The peaceful guidance of the serendipitous wind chimes
Building a glowing presence

It is this glow I leave you with. 

-B