ANEW: A Collection
~For Malcolm-Jamal Warner
Our thoughts assembled, like the choir in that big room
in the rear part of the school. Entering the door, they are greeted
by the slender man in shirt sleeves. He loves them; they can tell.
More so, they love him. That’s what gives him purpose – a life.
In rooms across the world, that is how it is done. With love.
It’s not an embrace, per se, but that clarity of the seeing,
understanding, and even shaping, not like the filling of a pail.
It’s an act of courage to be so, one with this soft scooping.
That is why, when we try to explain it, to get it right, we fail.
Time over time, we do not see how the man has dressed, picked the tie,
to honor them because of the mysteries that will come from them,
together made – concretize what is known but often never expressed.
Made visible by the chorale in the hymnal, which now they sing.
Is it the action that trills high above any plane they have known?
This any song forward, escaping, sacred yet sentient, out of noting,
pouring forth with wings, with wings, I tell you, it has flown, with wings.
Evocative in all ways. That's all I've got. Still grieving his loss and all that his goodness, innocence, normalcy, and vibrancy represented to my 1984 teen self. Thank you for this.