An Ode To Wangari Maathai
2023, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
A name
None would really recognize
Empathize
None would syncopate with
Or illustrate inky greenhouse gasses upon
The illustrious passes of pages
Of a hardback thumbtack history textbook
A name merely mistook for being
One among the waters among the wilting
Waves of an organic ocean
When Maathai
Was the motion
The notion that a name could mean
Life
Stifle the score of a song that
Only plays a great game of
Unwanted names in majors
And let the ragers of rain
Pour
Stifle the world that does not the allow
The core
The girl and the woman to collide
That does not let
Xx chromosomes inside
Let the wind whisper
And let the grass
Glide
Stifle the land that demands cash
For crops let it rot
Let the land be so barren it scares the sand
And startles it to skitter
Let the land be so broken it takes the whisper out of voice
Out of unspoken
So she can craft the new world
Awoken
Now as she
Lies in a grave somewhere where
Desert dares to save
Somewhere where
A tree is pleading down on one knee
He’s breathing again
He’s teething again
At a decaying soul
That’s sole purpose
Was to be
Under Mother nature’s
Name