Listening to Gwendolyn Brooks

It was pouring rain when we pulled into the parking lot, the coffee shop and lecture hall a few hundred feet away.  We’d not thought to bring an umbrella and so sat there for a minute or two in indecision.  Looking across the grassy commons we could see the warm glow of Starbucks and could just make out the forms of people inside sitting at tables sipping coffee.  The thought of hot java in our bellies gave us the necessary impetus to make a mad dash through the downpour.

We found seats in the lecture hall and sat quietly sipping coffee as the room filled up around us.  We were quite the contrast to all the chit-chat and hustle-bustle going on around us: quiet, reluctant to talk, fresh off some disagreement or other, an argument that hadn’t been resolved amicably.  It didn’t help that the emcee was once again the flakey professor of English who always introduces the guest poets and always annoys us greatly by doing so.  After several minutes of his prattle it was finally her turn.

She moved slowly to the podium, wading through our substantial applause.  She was a skinny old black lady with oversized glasses, her hair tucked into a knit Jamaican-style head covering, a grandma that could have just stepped off the city bus on 26th street.  Her voice was deep and strong belying her diminutive size and slightly hunched back.  We sat for an hour and a half listening to her read poetry, some funny, some sad, and some somewhere inbetween, but all of it profound.

A few weeks later at the hospital my pager went off during rounds while on the way to see an autistic boy.  I pealed off from the group to answer it.  It was your voice, “Did you hear the news?” a pause… “Gwendolyn Brooks died this morning of cancer.”

With Great Affection

on this Christmas 2000,

                       Aaron 

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