“The first Elder of Cave Canem, the remarkably successful
academy for young African-American poets, Afaa Michael Weaver is a poet,
playwright, and student of Chinese. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., refers to his poems
as ‘life studies,’ and indeed they reflect the variety of subjects and tones of
an adventurous life.”
—Ed Ochester
Solitude
Alone I meditate on the invisible,
the potentially beautiful and minute chasms
of meaning that divide me and God,
the trailing words from his mouth
whose echoes taunt me with suggestions
of the Oral Torah, the grand perfection
before the first droplet of water,
or the setting of the first grain of sand.
Inside I listen for him to enter me,
to flow into this infinite cavern of my heart
and help me know this quiet village
behind me and the solitary angel above,
as other sanctities beg in my shadow,
offering foreign altars and hymns.
“Solitude” from The Plum Flower
Dance: Poems 1985–2005
$14.00 • 136 pp. © 2007 University of Pittsburgh Press
American Poetry Now (ed. Ed Ochester) features poems by Afaa Michael Weaver
and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.