by Louisa Calio
Look at de earth, mon;
see how it work;
it work by itself
without your help.
Now watch de moon, mon;
watch de sun;
see de patterns
how dey go, how dey come.
What is nurturing dem?
Not just woman need to know dis.
Look at de people, mon;
how dey get locked in dey ways;
Look at you man
now look at your folks,
you are just dem mirror
in opposite strokes.
Just caus” de seasons change
and de prime ministers change
don't mean a ‘ting, mon.
Yeah, mon.
You so busy, always on de run,
working from your birth;
got so many things to work;
working for what de others need
a real politician, constant E-motion.
Hey mon, how you know what we need?
You never ask me.
Louisa Calio is an award winning poet, performer, and photographer. Director of the Poets and Writers Piazza for Hofstra’s Italian Experience for the last 8 years, she was Winner of the 1978 Connecticut Commission of the Arts Award to individual Writers, the 1987 Women in Leadership Award, Barbara Jones and Taliesin prizes for Poetry, The New Voices Trinidad and Tobago, and most recently honored at Barnard College as a feminist who changed America. Founder of City Spirit Artists, New Haven, CT, she has spent a life time bringing arts to people of varied economic levels. Her writings have appeared in the anthologies I Name Myself Daughter, She is Everywhere, Italian Heart American Soul, dark mother, Shades of Black and White, More Sweet Lemons, as well as in journals and newspapers. She has traveled to East and West Africa, lived in the Caribbean and documented her journeys in photographs and the written word, recently completing an epic poem Journey to the Heart Waters which was also the title of an exhibition of photos and poems that opened at Round Hill Resort in Montego Bay in 2007.
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