May Miller abhorred labels; in fact, she fought being labeled in a country and a time when people insisted that she be cataloged like so many unlabeled opaque bottles left dusty on a basement shelf. And so when called upon to read during the month of February, she would sigh in bafflement. "I wonder" she remarked, one night, as we rode to a reading, "if my work somehow transforms itself into some spectrum of relevancy during Black History Month, only to stagnate the first day in March." And then we talked of the stars.
Dark Instrument
Hold me and hear me, America,
For I am that instrument
Spring in Africa
Tuned to this land
Beat out my music.
Beat it out lightly.
Response comes shivering
To the hand
As when foliage leans
In wind trembling.
Beat out the lyric briskly.
Vibrations quicken to staccato
Sharp as spearheads
Thrust in bodies
Moving through the night.
Beat it out heavily,
Stroke heavily.
Passion flows deep
In the runnels of my song,
An undercurrent dark with woe.
Beat out my song steadily.
Strike deliberately with calm.
A new note could throb andante
In contrapuntal voice of men,
A rhythm caught in minors,
Echoed in tempered vessel of time.
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