frank o’hara, the color, the fruit, florida, bowl game, john mcphee, orange barons, concentrate makers, tropicana, vitamin c, prevention of the common cold, sunset, sunrise, morning has broken, cat stevens, van gogh, cēzanne, rothko, warhol, after yellow, safety cones, pumpkins, halloween, marigolds, monsoon wedding, dahlias, zinnias, carrots, turmeric, basketballs
song by Wallace Willis, a man enslaved by the Choctaw, but free when he wrote about the band of angels, i’m guessing we all know the spiritual, but not Mr. Willis, another voice lost in time, like Florence Price, first African-American female symphonic composer, her version of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, doesn’t make the radio, or the history books, we can all wonder why
You can listen to the composition by Florence Price here:
reading you makes me want to write, then write some more
that you were able to say it just so pushes me to plow ahead
to speak the nonsense things while sitting in my bed
you help me drift and sift through words lingering in the air
with hopes they might land lightly on the page
for what you wrote has become my nightly stage
Daniel W. Polk 