Showing posts with label Dayton.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dayton.. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Matilda Jane Dunbar 1845-1934


What’s a mother to do
with a son as precocious as this

what’s a freed slave woman to do
but smile at a son who poured out words
in stories      on paper        in print

what’s a mother to do
but swell with a bit of maternal pride
her son a leader of literary men

what’s a mother to think
her son out traveling the world
introduced to presidents and kings
while Jim Crow churns old hatreds

what’s a mother to do but hope
that after the searing civil war
her country will come to embrace her Paul
and all of his brothers and sisters

what’s an old black woman to do
but wake in the night terrified
as footsteps and fires still hammer and cleave
the fate of his brothers and sisters



----------------------------------------
Matilda Jane Dunbar was the mother of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906).

Born in Dayton, Ohio, and schoolmate and friend of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Paul Laurence Dunbar was one the first influential black poets in American literature.

-----------------------------------------

© Frank Kearns 2015