we
have always been different and the same
of course not the color of skin and hair
you’d change your look with cornrows one day
long braids and seashells the next and I never understood
since I just brushed mine and put on the same torn jeans
and Indian print t-shirts that said Peace and love as in the name
you gave yourself Niamani like everything else
you carried in your heart and I wore it on my sleeve and
thought about
the subway ride you had back to Brooklyn when you weren’t
on the upper West Side with me or at school where we were aliens
in “Waspdom” as we’d call it back then and howl with laughter
as none of our grandparents had been slave traders or robber barons
but Italian shepherds from the Bronx and kings from Sierra Leone
in Honduras near Flatbush and the Brooklyn Bridge
I thought you looked like a princess so it all made sense to me
it made sense
after the Civil Rights Act and the Vietnam War that everything
would forevermore be ok though I admit with hindsight you had
your feet more firmly planted in the ground and I’d say I was more
the “feeling groovy ” song type so you laughed at me…”that song…
that song…” was about everything wrong with me you bellowed
”hello lamp post” and cigarette smoke billowed out of your mouth
though you were right and I was too optimistic and think
around then you changed
your name because your boyfriend was a Rastafarian
from Jamaica while mine played frisbee in Central Park
do you remember you gave me a Maya Angelou book and I
wrote a tune that I played on the piano while you danced and then
we went to the same college and you used to let me sleep sometimes
in your dorm room because I was freezing in my off campus house
and then I bumped into you boarding the bus
one day at Columbus Circle
to visit your old boyfriend at Rikers Island and it’s stayed with me
you with the other black women and children standing there
I asked how many years does he get for marijuana
and you said what’s important is for folks to stick together
and I knew what you meant about friendship and solidarity
we always had the same convictions anyway though
I never understood what happened after
and why you briefly married some Mediterranean guy whose
name and face I couldn’t remember even before you got a divorce
and then at my wedding, you came late and I spent years wishing
I’d just eloped and gone to live in a tree not because of you
but because of everything else going on that day
by the way, did you say you’d gone to Macy’s
as if it was important just then to do that
we were both always late and I don’t remember
we were dispersed and I should’ve listened
thrown sticks of Yi Ching or at least learned how to do that
gone to Church more or been truer to myself and thought less
about how or if others were thinking of me while
we were searching for the transition into the lotus position
at centerstage looking to change with some style and variation
with a little attitude from the days when we were feeling groovy
and I wish it had taken less long for us to find out what it is
we truly hold dear in our hearts now or
should we be grateful for the growing pains
I suppose you’d say that it’s ridiculous to assume
it’s easy as when we first became friends
choreographing that duet to the Jimi Hendrix song “Little Wing”
finding graffiti on subway walls colorful and the rattle
the trains made awful only late at night
when it felt like a snake riding toward uncertainty
but then we were both so curious about everything
“walking through clouds” young and bleary eyed weren’t we
just telling the story from my point of view
I remember we often wore green army pants back then
you had a Malcolm X book in your school bag and I was reading
Herman Hesse and Yoga was a thing that we wanted to explore
to get away from the Hudson and East Rivers hoping
perhaps one day you might send me a photo of a dancing swan
in Rhineland where you live now and then I’d send you one
of an egret meditating by the San Francisco Bay since
I don’t think we’ve changed all that much
not in any significant way Niamani … namaste