Tenebris Imitation Poem- Breeze Strokes
“Dancing Color” by Alison Henry 2010
The voice is there, always,
That, today,
Sings a tune,
Tranquilly floats,
Dances colorful strokes of song
Away through the streets,
Between the fast movers,
Breeze to Breeze
The bright song glides and strides
Over the cracks,
The cracks are the lines of time, and quite consistant.
Is it a song.
Or is it the sun?
In imitating Angelina Weld Grimke’s Tenebris, I tried to match the form of the poem while inverting the tone from dark and mysterious to bright and positively open-ended. Grimke personifies the ominous tree giving it a dark hand that scratches at the white man’s house. These forms of imagery suggest angry undertones that seem to stem from racial oppression. Rightly so, the tree during this time of discrimination may have symbolized lynching, death, injustice, and black suffering. While I respect the negative nature of the poem and find it as an accurate representation of the emotions felt by a hurting African American society, I was curious to see if the form could lend itself to a positive vantage point.
The word choice that constructs the reader’s mental image of the tree and its branches is quite vivid, and in-turn I tried to use just as strong descriptors to provide an adequate picture of my poem’s dancing song. I contrasted the color way of the poem from dark to bright, thus overall bringing the poem out of the shadows and into the light.