Dear Friends,

 We hope that you are safe and well.

 Today's Meditation portrays Yolanda Wisher celebrating the wisdom figures in her life and continuing to revisit them and learn from their life stories and life wisdom.

 We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.

In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.

We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!

With our love and care,

Ron and Jean

MEDITATION 529: "No More Grandma Poems" Yolanda Wisher

November 29, 2021

no more grandma poems

Yolanda Wisher

they said

forget your grandma

these american letters

don’t need no more

grandma poems

but i said

the grandmas are

our first poetic forms

the first haiku

was a grandma

& so too

the first sonnet

the first blues

the first praise song

therefore

every poem

is a grandmother

a womb that has ended

& is still expanding

a daughter that is

rhetorically aging

& retroactively living

every poem

is your grandma

& you miss her

wouldn’t mind

seeing her again

even just

for a moment

in the realm of spirit

in the realm

of possibilities

where poems

share blood

& spit & exist

on chromosomal

planes of particularity

where poems

are strangers

turned sistren

not easily shook

or forgotten

Copyright © 2021 by Yolanda Wisher. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 29, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

“In a workshop I attended many years ago, someone complained eloquently about people writing too many ‘grandma poems.’ For a long time, their testimony had me hiding my grandma poems—like big, comfy underwear—from the public, even from myself. This poem is a proud acceptance of my unabashed adoration for all grandmothers, but especially Christine Johnson, my great-grandmother with whom I spent many days of my first decade. She is the reason I write poems. The world wouldn’t turn without grandmas like her, who are everything.”

—Yolanda Wisher

Yolanda Wisher is the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014). The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, she was the 1999 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and the Poet Laureate of Philadelphia from 2016 to 2017, where she currently lives.