This is one of my more recent poems. I wrote it upon entering Georgia State University in 2006. The park across the road from my apartment was the inspiration, if you’ve ever been to Hurt Park, or any of the many parks in Atlanta, I hope you can relate.

The bushes were all growing,
ugly as they were,
mangled, tangled, reaching
for what they were before.

The tree was overgrown then,
the path it overtook.
I was just because the people
weren’t there to look.

All it needed was a little love,
some pruning here and there,
and now the leaves and stems and grass
can breathe the autumn air.

The people can return now,
and they can walk the path,
and sit beside the bushes
and take a cool sunbath.

The young adults will grow up,
as the bushes did before,
some mangled, tangled, reaching
for something so much more.

These people, they will gather,
and you can see each face,
because the dreams they each held,
no longer they embrace.

Somewhere along the pathway,
a branch would get too long,
no gardener would prune it,
no longer did it belong.

All it needed was a little love,
if the world had only seen,
that the mangled, tangled reacher
could have grown into a tree.

-mdl

feelings
perfect, undisturbed, unbroken
ruined, carelessly tossed around
lost in waved of black
once beautiful, now ugly
lost in rugged brown
closing in, tight can’t breathe
can’t think, hurting pain
see, something, someone, I want
to be free, but I can’t
lost, to be lost, horrible
oh, to be like water, beautiful
water, perfect, undisturbed
unbroken
lost in waves of black

(written on a riverboat on the Savannah river as a stick drifted through the water.)

The original Langston Hughes poem can be found here.
Here is my reply:
I mother, too,
have faced problems.
My life has not
been a walk in the park.

I have stepped
on rocks
stubbed my toe
hurt my knee on the ground

I tripped
stumbled
ran into a tree here and there.
but

If I am wise, I will learn
from your mistakes
and mine
and grow