Here are a few selections from The Reluctant Poet.
Black Face – A Lament
How can I plead youth’s ignorance
Through innocence?
Thirteen of two thousand,
That’s all there were.
And I, with grease paint,
Feigning empathy,
Lead to the bowels of the theatre.
Why was I not offended
Resisting the sponge pressing
Centuries of black face on mine
So that Tituba’s story
Could be retold
In a tiny theatre
On a privileged white campus?
Why could not her story be told
In white face?
I am torn now
How do I make amends?
How do I repent?
How do I let justice roll
Down like a river?
My crucible
Has been too long in coming.
Forgive me.
Pinned
They have pinned their hopes on me—
Pinned me to the thin table of their expectations.
I have hovered too long, my shadow falling on their taut linen.
Their dreams have impaled me and carefully place me
Into a shallow, windowed box You did not design,
Where the light of their insufficient glow
Falls on the muted shades of unusable, and muted wings.
This You did not desire.
Nor do I.
I have tried to find my way
And the Way I have found is in You.
Their ways are not Your ways
As my ways are not Yours.
Thanks be to God!
I no longer have regard for their crestfallen faces,
Their languishing looks
Their disbelief that You could, You would
Lead me onto a different path that can be
Equally or more effective for You,
Equally or more obedient to You,
Ultimately the Way of humility and joy.
So I wrestle off of that pin
My blood dripping down its spine.
I lift the glass with my ploughed back
And fall into Your wonderful Light.
Your Light that graciously illumines,
Your Light that powerfully transforms,
Ultimately, the Light of Salvation for all.
Free me to fly into Your expectations and hopes,
Your dreams for me and all the dear ones.
Truly, others can lay plans for me.
But, You know the Way
And I will walk in it.
Let Me Lay It Down
Let me lay it down
This white and fairest skin.
The epidermis that has
Dominated so very many.
Please let me lay it down.
Let me lay it down
The fathers’ sins are hard to bear.
Those sins they press against
The temples of my head.
Oh, let me lay it down.
Let me lay it down.
Not because I despise it,
Nor because I refute it,
But because I see how in history it has been used.
So, please let me lay it down.
Let me lay it down.
I do not intend toward conquest.
I do not plan oppression.
I do not desire dominion.
So, please, please let me lay it down.
Let me lay it down,
That strange fruit of Billy’s,
That shackle, that chain
The whip and that pain!
Oh, do let me lay it down.
Let me lay it down,
Not to forget it or refuse it,
But to move to newness,
To find,
With you
The lovingkindness.
I want to lay it down.
Let me lay it down
And if you lay yours down, too
Perhaps we can come to terms
Can come to images of the new
As we all lay it down together.
© M.R.Hyde 2025
