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      February 21, 2025My Father Speaks of His Father.Bro. Yao (Hoke S. Glover III)

      If you did not resist
      May’s light might sing different.
       
      There’s still spring in the battlefields
      And everywhere there is blood.
       
      Underneath everything, the skin
      Of the world breathes, even when
       
      It is not broken. Speaking of love
      Is not love. That’s the secret.
       
      My own father taught me.
      He left like a season, but in that
       
      Simple season, when he fished
      In the muddy creek and made love
       
      To my mother, that was love.
      Some of the loves you can’t remember,
       
      Some have no names. I was born
      In a love that did not last, some
       
      Of the loves are everlasting, some
      Are like the sun rising. We are not born
       
      To fight, but we do, and we tangle love
      In that fight, we resist the changing
       
      Of the seasons with history and memory,
      Make a Bible of what was said.
       
      I don’t know his face. Or the way he danced
      And made my mother smile. But I know
       
      He sang sometimes and she liked it.

      from #86 – Winter 2024

      Bro. Yao (Hoke S. Glover III)

      “I have always written about my father. His death occurred just before I began to study for my MFA at Maryland. It seems I am always writing poems about my father. They have changed over the years. The initial poems dealt with the grief, the loss, the contradictions, the pain, the rubble of a family. I like this poem because it seems to find a sense of joy and acceptance that does not rise above tragedy or the challenges; but instead co-exists with them. I can’t count that sentiment in the poem as a poetic achievement, as much as a strange thing rising up out of the mist of getting older. I am thankful to see that relationship in the chain of my family’s evolution from a different perspective.”

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