Because we have forgotten our ancestors our children no longer give us honor.

Because we have lost the path our ancestors cleared, kneeling in perilous undergrowth, our children cannot find their way.

Because we have banished the God of our ancestors, our children can not pray….Dr. Maya Angelou,  The Black Family Pledge.

How do you poetically memorialize a great poet? You can’t, especially when her life was itself, a form of poetry.  Mother, daughter, granddaughter, actress, dancer, writer, activist, friend, teacher, mentor, avid cook and cultural luminary, Maya Angelou is gone, at age 86.  A survivor of child abuse,  life on the streets, Jim Crow segregation and the strife of history and circumstance that took so many of her friends—Malcolm, Martin, James Baldwin& others; Maya Angelou was bigger than her hometown of Stamps, Arkansas could hold. She was our Miriam;  our discoverer of oases and maker of wells, a songstress…