Godfrey Green
The Outsider
Those same pigeons perched there last year.
These children colliding, tumbling
have different faces, but their bodies
do the same things as those others.
All the winds of East Harlem bear on me.
My muscles forget their former movements.
I stare and stare, searching for a niche,
but they spin as a merry-go-round I can't grasp.
That little brown boy looks so like his father
who talks with me. But the child has more fists than hugs.
These children, chasing and tagging, have different bodies,
but their voices shout the same words.
East Harlem reverberates with their cries and my silence
Bio
I am a former librarian, currently teaching children in New York and Ghana, Africa. I am also working on English with adult ESL students. I have published a number of poems and a book of poetry, Toward Freedom.