Àshe, Third Quarter 1994 Page: 3 of 4
This periodical is part of the collection entitled: Hidden Selections of Houston’s African American and Jewish Heritage and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Rice University Woodson Research Center.
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"I Am Grass"
"Quiet Fire"
© by Charles W. Harvey
© 1994 Bobbie Wallace Wright
■ ■
SB.
g f
—
(Right) Hard at work in preparation for expansion
and additional training classes in basic framing and
matting are Frame Shop Manager, HanifHekima and
Associate, Patrick Moore. Where is that picture you've
been wanting to have matted and mounted. A great
surprise gift idea also for a loved one for the coming
Holiday Season.
"Km So Glad, Trouble Don't Last
Always."
excerpt from paper presented at UH African-American
Studies Symposium
WISDOM OF THE ELDERS
When you sit at the table with grandparents,
aunts, uncles and other kin
listen carefully to what they have to tell you,
for where you're going they've already been,
when you break bread with your family
imagine how you've grown by inch, by year
when lessons learned turn wrongs to right,
you've grown wiser through grace not fear,
your focus like the span of the eagle's wing
steady, strong, aiming higher than vision allows
your faith rooted like the trees and the waters,
permits only your heart to soar among the clouds.
Looking backOver the meadow of my life
I see a place—Elysium
I've been there
Somewhere
In that place
That stretches
Far beyond the self-imposed
Limits of my minds eye
Infinity, perhaps
A meadow covered with grass
Grass willowy, green,
Flexing with the breeze
Grass bending
Level to the ground
From which it extends
Rooted, sustained by a cell
That I have come to respect,
To know as Time
Somewhere in that meadow
A majestic oak
Branches sprawling,
Formidable, Inflexible,
Consumed in stillness
Daring to challenge
The winds of Time
Demanding its will
To convince its spirit that
Strength and might alone
Are sufficient for it to deny
The challenge of change
Of adjustment, of adaptation
Of flexibility, of temporary yielding
Upon my return from Elysium
I celebrated the discovery
Of who I am
I am not the strong
And mighty Oak
For eventually the Wind
Did cut it down
Its strength was its weakness
I am the Grass
For when the raging Wind
Finally ceased
From the ground, I did rise,
Because I was rooted,
Still bound
To the Life Line.
©1994
Brenda Arnold-Scott
All rights reserved
Love is Not Ignorant
art is the physical manifestation of our spiritual
reality
originating from the source of creation,
we were created to create
to feel the light and let it shine in someone's life
is to experience the energy of creativity
it is living and loving
and love is not ignorant
it educates the imagination
it creates the world in which imagination expresses
its intelligence
existing in a three diminisional world,
love does not ignore the laws of math and science
however, it understands that education without
the arts has a cultural value of zero
"nothing from nothing leaves nothing'
there is no empowerment
there is no journey
there is no expansion
stagnant life cannot exist
in a changing world and an expanding universe
to understand the creative process
is to render the services of math and science to the
arts
they serve to bring the idea from one mind into the
sights of many
"God created man"
"man evolved"
no matter what One/one creates,
the medium comes from the earth
creating is the continuing of life
but we find ourselves engaged in a battle of
destruction
the cultural arts lie comatose
in the boardrooms and offices of arts organizations
and there is no life support system
there is no vision
there is no business sense
programs are booked up
children are locked out
professional remain unpaid
while socialites host opening nights of ego exhibitions
cultural fraud runs rampant
someone is responsible
someone is accountable
remember, love is not ignorant
by Mack Beddard ©1994
THE NEAREST STAR
© by Alvin LeBlanc
Your love
and my heart are now distant
Like the nearest star and my sitting presence
on a red brick porch near live oak,
just before the silver line of lights before
morning.
I wait
watching for you,
but the sun is fast approaching with
or without you.
The see through blue of morning the sky is here
now
The Moon's paper like reflection is barely
noticeable,
And I am still waiting for your love and
that fast dropping feeling within
though they are distant and "MILES APART"
LIKE
my porch and the nearest star
© Roots Collective "Working"
September 12,1994
"Mistakes we make are in our judgments, not in our nature, it is only when we do
violence to our nature that we are justified in our regrets."
by Frank O'Connor
"Last Night, I prayed
like other nights,
last night, I asked the LORD
to lift the pain
like other nights
he heard me
like so many other nights;
slowly, my clenched fist beat with the rhythm of a
caisson song
upon my chest,
the hurt rose up
like the warm air,
congested.
The finger of my hand
spread open
lowering gently till they lie
still, flat, calm,
like the comforter around me."
Hello. My name is Pete Chesterfield Jr. I'm
twenty-four years old, handsome and lanky.
"Black Velvet" is what my girl calls me when she's
rubbing her hand over my back. I dance here in
New York. Judy James the Dance Critic calls me
"Demon with feets." I'm no demon. That's what
my daddy was.
Despite him I turned out all right. He left his
marks. Yes he did. A scar messed up one of my
eyebrows, pushes it up so I look like devilish out
of one eye. But I'm no devil. I'm a pussycat when
I'm not dancing.
My answers to Judy James, the Critic, in her
interview with me were true. She said when I
dance the piece "Elijah Rock," she knows I'm
dancing out demons. And my performance is so
electric until all she can do is write exclamation
points behind my name when she tries to describe
my movements. She said I'm not just dancing to
the music of the spiritual, I'm dancing to another
music in my head. She asked me what was that
other music. Well I had an answer for Judy James.
I told her that "other music" was the sound of the
extension cord my father whirled just above my
head. When I spin and leap almost in the same
movement, it's the lash of that cord cutting wicked
impressions into my back. "You see, Judy," I said,
"When you grow up ducking and dodging the lash,
you learn movement."
Now my ability to reduce a movement to its
tiniest almost imperceptible twitch comes from the
vision of the girl my Father hurt, she's a young
woman now. Just three years younger than 1.1
This will be my last issue as editor of 'Ashe, it has been a privilege to serve you and it is my sincerest hope that
some word, some image within the pages of the issues we brought to you this past year have made a positive
impact on your life. I must return to what fills my heart and makes my soul happy, writing POETRY!
Wishing you and those you love, JOY, PEACE, LOVE, FAITH, TRUTH AND GRACE.
RENEWED SPIRIT
by Bobbie Wallace Wright
We must continue to read, write
and draw the line
"Don't let the eye wander, move away,
are your actions formed by what you think,
or by what you say?
the point, is access, it begins and ends the line,
the image created changes with age, age is time,
but what does it become?
part of the whole, or one more edge, one more
corner,
a slender thread along the side of the well traveled
road
that leads and follows patterns,
cause 'paths' are only forged once!
How often we look,
but never see
the child of hope deep inside
the dream so often
the course becomes the schemes we've tried
while searching for the truth
we never saw the family of faith and fellowship
in a friends handshake,
the heart of the elder freely given
wasn't asking for a handout just wanted to share
the means of survivin' and the secret of livin';
for a long time now
everyone still seems like they're,
running out on each other
running into storm after storm
running over the same ole, same ole questions
placed between the short broken lines centered in
that road
looking out for self, and can't even carry that load
too proud to reach out
too stubborn to reach back
too blind to reach inside
went to visit her once before I moved here to New
York. She's in a sanitarium in the woods not far
from Houston. A river runs by the place. I watched
her sitting by the river starring at the water. As I
watched her closely I realized she wasn't just
watching the water like some poor little dumb
thing. Her eyes absorbed the muddy brown right
out of that water and became muddy pools of
brown. Her breathing flowed in tiny ripples match-
ing the movement of the river beat by beat.
I wanted to apologize to the girl on behalf of
my Father. When I touched her shoulder, Her
breathing stopped and she froze. She knew who
I was. She knew I was a product of Pete
Chesterfield. Maybe she smelled him through me.
So in a round about way my Father in his cruel-
ty made me a dancer. Don't quote that. That's
only half true. It was my Father's pain that made
me a dancer. His meanness was him running from
himself. I found an old diary of his. He wrote very
lovely descriptions of boys and young men. Page
after page was filled with words like "chest of iron
and honey, faces of polished brass and onyx,
sweet cinnamon legs, arms muscular and danger-
ous and sweet colored like brown sugar"so no my
Father didn't hate me. He was just scared to love
me like he wanted to. That's why when I think
about that girl in the sanitarium, I cry for my
Father also.
There! Enough about the personal history of
Pete Chesterfield Jr. My next project is going to
be an interpretation of Billy Holiday's "Strange
Fruit." It's going to have lots of small movements
like the leaves of a fruit tree in an ever so slight
wind. I may stand stock still for fifteen minutes
and let my breathing be the dance. Yes, you can
say that again. It will have lots of quiet fire.
the line of fabric that binds the neighbor to the hood,
the line that curves the wrong side of the street with
the good
the line that cuts the skin of the child with hunger
and grief
the line that makes one self-sufficient enough
to defeat
everything that looks like doubt
everything that blocks their way out of mental
poverty
everything that controls the spirit and the soul
we must continue to read about the lines, continue to
write the lines, continue to draw the lines that bind us
together as a community, as a culture, as a people, as
lines of color in a communal cloth of earth...
from ebony to indigo / from ivory to almond /
from mocha to mahogany I from cocoa io chestnut I
from umber to sienna I from onyx to midnight......
the line of hope that binds the parent, teacher and
preacher,
the line of hope that says all things are possible if
you only believe
the line of hope that connects the clay and the sand,
and the dust and the tree
the line etched in the crease of the brow, the palm
of the hand,
the line that stems the small of the back, the bend
of the knee
the line that binds us all together, if we'd only take
the time to see how
important we are to for and through each other
the line from the old hymn the elders and my
parents sang over and over and over"
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Community Artists' Collective. Àshe, Third Quarter 1994, periodical, Autumn 1994; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1324897/m1/3/: accessed June 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.