photo by Alex Lear

WHILE I WAS WALKING

down the motel corridor

i nodded my head & spoke

to the black maid—

late-twenties, maybe mid-thirties—

who smiled and delivered

a deeply dimpled reply

in a low-pitched, whiskey-voiced

off-handed, matter-of-fact way

that led me

—and i suppose

would have tempted

most hetero-black males

of my generation—

to wonder how that voice

would have sounded

when pitched in the throes

of excruitiating love making

this was not the dog in me

barking for a boning

but rather the traditional

appreciator of african aesthetics

who finds great comfort

in both the pleasure and spirituality

of african feminity

and who acknowledges

with neither shame nor hesitancy

that i can be both physically

and spiritually moved 

by the deepness

of a dark-hued woman’s 

sweet voice

i suppose there are those

who will find this poem problematic

but that is their problem

as for me

i will never stop 

greeting black women

& will continue to be 

profoundly grateful to my sisters

and whatever gods there be

that despite the historic

and contemporary disasters

and miscues which taint

a multitude of exchanges

between females and we males

black women nevertheless

continue to respond

to our quieries of “good morning/

good evening, how you doing?”

with that most profound

of monosyllabic redundacies—

you know what i mean, how

when a sister that some hollywood

counch caster might consider a bit plump

weighing in on the upside 

of a hundred pounds 

but all attractively porportioned

in the classic negroidal 3-2-4 

golden ratio of breasts, waist, butt

will innocently restate the obvious

as she looks up from whatever she is doing

looks up, stares you in the eye

and simply sounds an answer

to your rhetorical query

simply sounds

that amazingly accurate

one-word-tells-all 

ebonic refrain:

“fine!”

and then i moved on

—kalamu ya salaam