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Sherlene Stevens: Poetry of Appreciation To My Female Audiences

Perhaps some of you, like me, have a daughter who has pursuits to attend college, or desires to move away for their first job opportunity.

To a Daughter Leaving Home
When I taught you at at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away
on two round wheels, my own mouth rounding in  surprise when you pulled ahead down the
curved  path of the park, I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up,
while you grew smaller, more breakable with distance, pumping, pumping for your life,
screaming with laughter, the hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye. --Linda Pastan


Look what our attitude of  American finance systems have done--productively allowed the labels or identification of our most highlighted social dysfunctions towards money.

A Song in the Front Yard
I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back where it's tough and
untended and hungry weed grows.  A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now and maybe down the alley to where the charity
children play.  I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.  They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it's fine how they don't have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George'll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it's fine.  Honest, I do.
And I'd like to be a bad woman, too.
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
and strut down the streets with paint (makeup) on my face. -Gwendolyn Brooks 

Happy Mother's Day!        Women Appreciation Month!