To Maya Angelou

To: Maya Angelou From: Tony Angelo In the city a chisel across the grain?, like a concrete heartbeat under my feet, I heard her voice, Maya, like warm a river flowing off the cracked pavements, stories that rose up like steam on a hot summer day, inspiring and touching. Like a cool breeze on a summer day. This black woman's voice, was a powerful drumbeat awakening my echoes of ancestral pain, her inspiration made the very air clear. Her words, passionate soothing enlightening with the threads of struggle and triumph, opening my soul mind and understanding like a wildflowers pushing through the cracks in a pavement, it was truly a testimony to her own resilience of spirit, being abused, neglected and still educated refusing to be contained, refuses to be forgotten, refuses to concede to the hard-edged buildings that scrape her own skies. The turmoil she bore, a weight of inherited wounds, became her fuel, it ignited her passion, with a fire that could enlighten the coldest heart, through shared understanding conditions an empathy. With the dream that others will feel it now, this passion too unveil humanity into its simple as parts, through the power of words that inspire and transform, to uplift and illuminate those in the corners of society, she was a beacon for urban landscape, beckoning us all rise, and reach beyond the limitations that any society imposes and to craft our own narratives, full of passion and unstands, with resilient dreams. Her legacy, was a song echoing through each alleyway in my soul, inspiring the souls of every child of color with a promise of hope, “You are enough, you are seen, you will be heard”. Maya Angelou, is that guiding star in a world of darkness, to continually light our way, to pushing us forward, her powerful voice, a constant, unwavering, inspiration.