by Beverly George

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“Come back South,” my mother said on the phone,
“To your people.”
They are my people.
Like rivers moving through continents
They are my heritage,
My inheritance.

She tugged on the line
They are my very own, as seed
Belongs in rich black soil,
To them
I belong.

Because I was born in the North,
Didn’t taste grits or chitlins until halfway grown,                                
Sheltered in suburbs before launching in life
To Ivy Leagues, raised three children
And got two master’s degrees

But no farther up the crystal stair did I dare,
Stymied by life’s maze of ideals while
Slapped with the sight
Of strange fruit hanging from innocent trees
Burdened by timeless tears unretrieved.

Claimed by neither region when Mother invited me home
I’d been so long singing in my place in the North
Thoughts shrouded in sequestered dreams
But the South drew me like a magnet
To unexplored ancestry.

Proper English found Gullah Geechee dialect
Black-eyed peas and rice, St. Louis Blues and New Orleans
Jazz danced with uncles and aunts
Sharing centuries’
Suffering in a glance.

Sometimes I miss MoMA and Central Park
But ushered in from hushed snows
Circlinginthedark
To the South where my people
Endured the harsh past
And embraced my heart
When I came home.

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Beverly George is an aspiring poet who retired in 2020 after teaching music for 22 years in Sumter, S.C. Her poems can be found in the SC Bards Anthology issues 2023 and 2024 and she was mentioned in the Poetry.com July 2023 contest as runner up.  Her chapbook, First Light was published in 2022 and her new book is forthcoming in 2025.  Her family lives in MN and NY.