I'd like to end with a poem which has no title.
It's from the book, An Ordinary Woman.
I wrote this poem.
I believed it,
I believe it sincerely.
But I like to think of myself as a positive kind of poet
and a positive kind of person, and I wasn't sure this was.
So I went to the wisest man I know,
whose name is Fred Clifton, and I asked him.
And he said Lucille, the truth is always positive.
Didn't I tell you?
He was the wisest man I know.
"And so the 38th year of my life plain as bread,
round as a cake, an ordinary woman, an ordinary woman.
I had expected to be smaller than this, more beautiful,
wiser in African ways, more confident.
I had expected more than this.
I will be 40 soon.
My mother once was 40.
My mother died at 44, a woman of sad countenance
leaving behind a girl awkward as a stork.
My mother was thick.
Her hair was a jungle and she was very wise and very
beautiful and very sad.
I have dreamed dreams for you mama more than once.
I have wrapped me in your skin and made
you live again more than once.
I have taken the bones you hardened and built daughters,
and they blossom and promise fruit like African trees.
I am a woman now, an ordinary woman.
In the 38th year of my life surrounded
by life, a perfect picture of blackness blessed,
I had not expected this loneliness.
If it is Western, if it is the final Europe in my mind,
if in the middle of my life I am turning the final turn
into the shining dark, let me come to it whole and holy, not
afraid, not lonely out of my mother's life into my own,
into my own.
I had expected more than this.
I had not expected to be an ordinary woman."
Thank you very much for listening.
[APPLAUSE]
This gesture means the God in me recognizes the God in you.
Thank you.