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Poem In Your Pocket Day: UHD Professor Robin Davidson Shares Original Poem
By Sheryl E. Taylor
In honor of National Poetry Month’s 'Poem In Your Pocket Day' UHD Professor of English Robin Davidson (2015-17 Houston Poet Laureate) shares her original poem “To Speak of Rivers.”
To Speak of Rivers
after Langston Hughes
Out of land, ancient, dusky, out of marsh’s muddy bosom—
a city rises skyward, each slab and brick,
each wooden beam, steel girder, mirrored surface,
a collective act of faith that a single port imagined and rooted
in a soil’s shifting can hold, call us home.
In the Biggers mural women of color move like a river
through time, history, and the reams of fabric they carry, quilt.
The woman in their midst, almost angel,
shines amber beneath what could be thread
or basket straw or rough-hewn wings,
and she looks southward toward the city’s sculpted skyline.
On Dowling Street in the heart of Houston
men’s voices rise, their guitar strings turn harp, then trumpet—
Lightning Hopkins, Texas Johnny Brown, Earl Gilliam, Grady Gaines—
until the street fills with night and song,
and I hear my own son’s voice, Born in Houston, trill among them.
On Yupon Street in the chapel named for Rothko,
the wall-sized work beneath the atrium ceiling’s shining
opens into luminous black, plum, rose. The painter believed
in the power of light to save us, just as
Newman believed in elemental form, color, the ancient
obelisk broken, rising out of water, de Menil’s monument
to a great man’s prayers turned earthward.
In the papyrus fragment of a first-century gospel, a man stands
on the bank of the Jordan, a handful of seeds in his palm.
He releases them into the current that fills first with seedlings,
then sprouts, then trees—quinces, figs, apples.
In Fourth Ward, a woman lies down in the coffin-like hole of a street
where patterned brick laid by freedmen is dug out, lost. Her body’s
weight is a port, the rooted call rising
out of land ancient, dusky, out of marsh’s muddy bosom—moving like the ghost
of a river whose tide fills with trees, their sap like human voices
soaring, a singing turned city, and free.
Dedicated to Mayor Sylvester Turner and the City of Houston
2016 Houston Arts Reception for Elected Officials
February 29, 2016
The University of Houston-Downtown (UHD)—the second largest university in Houston—has served the educational needs of the nation’s fourth-largest city since 1974.
As one of four distinct public universities in the University of Houston System, UHD is a comprehensive four-year university led by Interim President Dr. Antonio D. Tillis. Annually, UHD educates more than 15,000 students; boasts more than 51,000 alumni and offers 44 bachelor’s, nine master’s degree programs and 16 fully online programs within five colleges (Marilyn Davies College of Business; Humanities & Social Sciences; Public Service, Sciences & Technology; and University College).
UHD has the most affordable tuition among four-year universities in Houston and one of the lowest in Texas. The University is noted nationally as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Minority-Serving Institution and Military Friendly School. For more on the University of Houston-Downtown, visit www.uhd.edu.