"Kansas Land"

Mar 27, 2006

Gordon Parks, the poet, wrote:

I would miss this Kansas land.

Wide prairie filled with green and

cornstalk;

the flowering apple,

Tall elms beside glinting streams ...

Silver September rain, orange-red-

brown Octobers

and white Decembers with hungry

smells

of hams and pork butts curing in the

smokehouse.

Yes, all this I would miss "

along with the fear, hatred and

violence

We blacks had suffered upon this

beautiful land.