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Chapter 23: Wisdom Cometh With the Years

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About This Book

A collection of tightly crafted lyrics that probe racial identity, aesthetic aspiration, and personal longing. The poet alternates intimate love poems and public meditations, drawing on classical, religious, and contemporary imagery. Recurring themes include the pain and pride of Black experience, the tension between artistic vocation and social constraint, and reflections on mortality and faith. Formally, poems move between sonnet-like lyrics, epigrams, narrative vignettes, and elegies, marked by musical diction, formal control, and occasional irony. Together the pieces balance tenderness and critique to examine how beauty, suffering, and creative voice intersect under social pressures.

Wisdom Cometh With the Years

NOW I am young and credulous,

My heart is quick to bleed

At courage in the tremulous

Slow sprouting of a seed.

Now I am young and sensitive,

Man’s lack can stab me through;

I own no stitch I would not give

To him that asked me to.

Now I am young and a fool for love,

My blood goes mad to see

A brown girl pass me like a dove

That flies melodiously.

Let me be lavish of my tears,

And dream that false is true;

Though wisdom cometh with the years,

The barren days come, too.