Lucille Clifton has passed away. She leaves behind family and friends, powerful poetry and countless black women writers for whom she was a patron saint. I once heard someone say that she was a poet’s poet. I have read only a small portion of her work, but I see why. She seemed to look inward, to her own life and community and this very spiritual, political act of being a woman, for inspiration. A singular depiction of an isolated instance can reveal answers about the whole of humanity. Everything is everything.
Among the things I take away from her work, I take that I am enough. Lucille Clifton could have written of loftier things; she could have made references to things I know nothing of and flexed language that required a vocabulary lesson before I could get through a poem. She didn’t do that. She spoke to being human, of women and men and babies and families. She spoke of God and light and death and thriving – apartments, city blocks, neighborhoods. All she needed was right there. We were enough for her. We are enough still.
Lucille, “which stands for light”, shine always. Amen.
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I've now added The Book of Light to my reading list.
