Poetry in Community Celebrates Outside Waverly Library

Chill and clouds didn’t damper the day as crowds gathered to listen and perform on the sidewalk in front of the village branch of the free library.

Inside to honor National Poetry Month, the librarians set up a beautiful colorful table teasing all with poetry books that were difficult to resist reaching for and reading from - a page here, a page there.

Walking to the event along 33rd Street a lovely garden of flags caught my eye - a gardener’s poem to passersby. In Greenmount Avenue shop windows mens and women’s wear arranged to celebrate the explosion of spring was a window shopping delight. Going through the 32nd Street Farmers’ Market I stopped at Andy’s Eggs to say hello and heard Art Cohen on his handsome Italian accordion before getting to my destination. 

Christopher was chalking “Free Poetry” while Doug held out an open mike. 

Bravo Poetry in Community for a month of fun events that included placing poems in a barber shop and discount store along a poem walk. 

Today’s event was the culmination of April’s cruellest month festival. Someone read his verse about being freed from addiction; someone else shared a Battle of Baltimore victory poem. The sidewalk was like Hyde Park’s speakers corner or Washington Square in old Greenwich Village. 

The Friends of the Waverly Branch set up a table with free tea and cookies next to a flyer announcing their next meeting 6pm Monday May 7.

The indoor display table showcased several books, one proclaiming to include the best 100 poems by African Americans. I sat down, flipped through its pages, reading quite a few and decided to end this essay with one that spoke to me. 

The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln 

     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy 

     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.