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Somerville resident and acclaimed poet Afaa Michael Weaver graced us with a poem about the troubles in Baltimore, his native city. Weaver wrote us:

When Baltimore erupted as a result of Freddie Gray’s death and the weight of history, I was in Wyoming as a resident in the Jentel Arts retreat for a month long residency I won with my application. It was quite a gift, and I was working on my new collection of poems about working class culture, “Eight Trigram Spirit Boxing.” Baltimore is my hometown. I was born there, and I lived and worked there until I was thirty three years old. My heart ached to see Freddie’s death and the history of hurt, which I know. So I wrote this poem for Freddie Gray and for Baltimore.

A Poem for Freddie Gray, Baltimore

by Afaa Michael Weaver

 

Each heart its own vessel, each wish
a summation of a day not even that heart
can know, and here now, in this moment,
this pulled out flesh of time, undone is
what it comes to be, undone to do again,
somewhere in the rolled back eyes
of repeating what we call history when
history cannot be repeated. We make
new memories each time we breathe,
and breathing fire we remove care
from the core of what we call love because
we have come to believe no one cares,
as the air is filled with meaningless bits
of meaning cut to shreds, walked on,
forgotten. If tomorrow never comes,
it is the fault of some misplaced moon
and not the failure of what we know
is human, what we know has mind and
wish and hope carved out of spaces
where we learned to live despite hatred.