At Buckroe Beach (for my daughter, Afiya)

Published in Longstoryshort.com, 2010

Watching her
it has been eighteen years
Out of corner of my eye, I thought
sun slanted peachcream into us
I have to remember
a tightly curled ponytail, shades covering her eyes
Her shadowed hair
buckroe beach crumpled beneath
The way sun creams down on
untender touch of sand castle builders.
Brown of her shoulders like a praise.
she used to be that little black girl, ashened
Like sharks whispering reverence near us in cool crystal deep
pushing grains into submission
A daughter’s cusp eyes
folding salt and water into imagery mote.
Young, at the beginning of life’s edge where
she laughs at high yellow girl who, unaware,
Chipped bones of ancestors wade, pushing prayers
threw her own hairpiece at another screaming friend
Into her old timey eyes, recognizing kin. They know my daughter,
triffling, curl of afiya’s mouth say.
Like rocking chairs and lamps that flicker out
jellyfish slip up next to her, translucent with longing
At first lightning crack, at first thunder strike
desperate for the kiss, the flesh of her.
Her knowing, full in the mouth of a storm.
i turn
No paper, no pencil
she is at once the girlchild I raised, washed, kept
I turned
and the woman who will leave me behind
A space, then nothing between us
i look again and she is just my daughter
The salt rising
walking beside me, laughing.
This moment
It has been eighteen years
The last, the first
as sun slanted peach rain against our arms, lips
I memorize it, thinking, I must remember
there was a poem here somewhere.
Everything.
(c) Shonda Buchanan

Montana...

Sitting atop the Hayes, Montana mountain on Ft. Belknap reservation, my husband and I grinned at each other like kids with cookies. It was the 4th of July. We had made it. Only here for a couple days, we gazed hungrily down into the valley that held our friends' home, and their 35 dogs and pups, their 30 horses and 10 llamas that they breed. Everywhere color. The green hills were so green you felt like if you licked it you'd taste lime. The skies were a seamstress blue, and you almost smell the thread, the woman's hands and the lavender stitches being sew into the shifting cotton clouds. It was good to sit with the dog, Meggie, who'd attached herself to as our guardians and just look and look. For miles Indian country. As we drove from LA, I couldn't help think, 'this is all Indian country.' Our journey from LA had been filled with surprises, Wyoming and Utah held such beauty, even the outskirts of Las Vegas floored us, but the most startling testament of how our country still echos with past discrimination were signs like the one in Idaho saying, "Warning to Tourists: Do Not Laugh at the Natives." My husband whipped his head around as we drove past, "did you see that?" He made me turn around so he could take a picture. It's on my Facebook page, and every time I look at it, I can't help but think who are the real "Natives?" So much has changed since 1492. But when we see a sign that has to remind tourists not the guffaw at the "Natives," i.e., Native Americans, the indigenous people of that land, I think maybe not much has changed. But on that mountaintop in Montana, for the moment, we could dream...

Across a Country

On June 6th or 7th, my daughter and I packed up our Rav 4 and revved the engine. After saging the wheels, blessing our journey, we pulled out of the driveway and into a summer adventure that has become oddly and not so oddly, a representation of my life as a mother, writer, professor, a RedBlack, and poet. All of these things are what I want to look at, and to lay out for discussion. My observations of this gorgeous country, our towns, and the way we lodge people, or (Arizona) expel people despite and often because of our sameness and yet, those perceived and real vast divides. And most definitely how we are still all in the pathway of nature, and maybe of our own selves. So, I will try to keep the pics and postings coming on a regular weekly basis until work starts back up at the end of August. Maybe some of them will appear before in a couple of newspapers, magazines, or online publications. If I'm lucky, and time permits, I will continue writing into the winter and spring. this is my hope. I will share but I hope to hear your thoughts echoing back to me. Until the first post later this week...