SUBWAY SINGER
I watch her pour out
the contents of her entire self
until the tendrils of her heart
hang from her fingertips.
She is planted in the concrete,
boots, song and keyboard,
sprouting from the grime
of a city that tried to forget she was there—
she is the thing you cast away
and tell yourself will disappear if you will it.
But you cannot forget a song
born in some place life has cornered you;
it is that place of frightening clarity
where you never go but always arrive at,
where you recognize that beauty can ache.
So familiar notes lodge in the ear
And cling, with a feverish nagging,
to the most honest parts of yourself;
and when she sings about lost boys
and she looks up at me,
it is a truth, and a curse, and an apology.
—-
AVENUE OF THE OAKS
If these oaks could talk,
What tales would they tell?
These magnificent witnesses,
Watchers of time and silence;
Of what horrors do they hum
As the Spanish moss swings?
What does the blackbirds’ song mean?
This dirge that caws across the summer sky
Calling for the unnamed and the unsung,
The bought and the stolen,
The fearful and the brave.
Is it a haunted melody that refuses to forget?
I peer into the brown, unending waters
Barely catching the sunset’s gold
And wonder:
Which sins still cling to this marsh?
What sickness still stirs beneath the genteel?
Whose spirits are still alive in these soils?
Whose spirits are still alive in these soils?
—-
Poetry © Nana T. Baffour-Awuah
Image: MS Copilot AI