To Learn, To Know, To Heal, To Grow
I'm often asked:
'What caused you to collect Slave Artifacts,
And take them on the road, displaying them in cases,
Raw and real? '
My answer is a simple one, 'To heal.'
'To heal? ' they ask. 'What is there to be healed? '
I answer with paternal patience, as
I would a child.
Then, I commence my tale.
It was not long ago two ladies stood
Together at a showing on my tour,
An African American and a Caucasian.
One to seek her heritage,
The other to find satisfaction that
Hyperbole was the foundation for
The stories of the hardships slaves endured.
Within my cases lies reality.
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poem by Lynn W. Petty
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Farewell
Farewell, my sweet lady, I bid you adieu.
Like yesterday's sunset you've passed from my view.
You said I'd forget you, how could I, my dear?
My love has been buried, my heart was its bier.
My memory will hold you as flower and book;
Pressed petals in pages from love's garden nook.
And when I grow older, as all of us must,
I'll reach through the past, through mind's rubble and dust,
To draw to the foreground your vision, my light,
To hold in my mind's eye your womanly sight.
Tumultulus din, oh, hellhoundings of thought!
What void in my reason has loneliness wrought? !
I grieve by your headstone completely undone,
My living is over before it's begun.
Think not of the dark side, see only her face;
Think only her bright side, her passion, her grace.
And, when I grow older and nothing remains,
When I have no purpose, when nothing pertains,
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poem by Lynn W. Petty
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Sestina/Creation
When all supply was in the hands of Cause,
Effect was molten primal chaos, held
Within a universal cauldren, rest
Was given to consider what the blend
Would yield. What distillation might there come
When left to steep upon the flame of time?
What essence to be poured or spooned, when time
Had separated dross from grime; When Cause
Congealed Effect as form? What shape would come?
Omniscience knew the liqued luster held
Within an orbed mold to cool, would blend
A tear so pure, that Genesis could rest.
An orb within the plumbless steep, no rest
Was had as crystal creep began. In time
A metamorphic stress; a grinding blend
Of blasting heaves had splayed the plates to cause
The core to spill its viscous blaze. Not held,
A spew and fall of flaming rock had come.
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poem by Lynn W. Petty
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Appalled
I gasped at what I held in my two hands.
My son had handed me the leather whip,
A bullwhip, five feet long, a master used
To subjugate his slaves unto his will.
And then, he handed me the branding irons,
Which heated to a red-hot glow were used
To brand a human as a master's own.
I felt disgust, appalled, to think they scorched
A person's brow, or seared a woman's breast
To indicate a master's ownership
Of human beings.
Slaves were classified
As lower than the cattle in the field,
Who lived in quarters, a degree above,
What masters would provide for their prize pigs.
Slave girls were tagged as 'breeders, ' bred like dogs,
To bind in servitude their newborn child.
A slave was valued by his 'use, ' not by
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poem by Lynn W. Petty
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I Bad Farewell to Night
Above the cliffside looking down its sheer,
I wavered on the edge of my resolve.
The ache of heart had plumbed the depths of pain.
A storm approached, its bands of clouds had screened,
With opal mist, the early morning blue.
The distant thunderheads seemed held aloft
By colonnades of rain.
The pounding surf was pillaging the shore
With surge and swell of sea.
Resounding hard against the break,
Its thunder broke the solitude with sound.
In vain, veiled streams of sunlight strove to lift
The brooding loom of nature's broiling mood.
Enveloped in the heave and thrust of shift
And change, I saw dynamic push and shove
As cosmic evolution lifted me
To heights beyond the ego of myself.
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poem by Lynn W. Petty
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