Witness To A Great Black Woman

I am a witness First Lady Obama 

to you moving into the white house 

to mother your daughters and husband

your graceful assurance giving hope

to hundreds of mamas working away from home

while their sad-eyed brown babies cry themselves to dreamless sleep

their little girls wear lint filled pigtails to kindergarten and Sunday school

I am a witness Ebony Queen of America

to your giving encouragement to women of color 

who raise the children of their white employers

as they work their 24/7 domestic jobs 

that sap their loving after-school words

drain all mothering and Dr. Seuss bedtime story hugs

day after night after weekend after holiday

I am a witness wise first lady

to your empathy for colored working mothers 

who raise successful sons and daughters here and there

but lose four out of five potential presidents to insecurity complexes disguised by

drugs and swaggering hips on teens wearing low riding jeans heavy with greenbacks 

earned using their degrees in selling dope 

taught by street corner babysitters

I am a witness to chocolate girls in micro braids and shoulder length silky yak weaves

pushing their fatherless Halley Berry seasoned babies 

in strollers through housing projects and city parks 

where old black ladies pause their hand fans

lean forward from their benches cooing at the light skins

but frowning at the dark mommies with coco colored children 

as if tasting bitter black coffee

I am a witness to many brainy bright sisters brave like you

family nurtured like Condoleezza

but they are often ignored by their own 

and overlooked by red white and blue organizations 

that practice glass ceiling politics 

yet ironically open their doors to women with foreign accents

who are propped up and educated on free money from American universities

I am a witness 

to separate drinking fountains in the town square

to screaming in horror at Godzilla and Blob movies while sitting in the movie theaters’ segregated balcony 

to standing in the alley behind the McDonough Georgia Drugstore with screened back door 

to buy medicine and ice cream cones 

handed out by a long white arm 

of somebody without a face.

I am a witness first black first lady

to this new day 

where our rainbow of people

stand together

for a moment in time

holding hands, shedding tears of joy

congratulating you

I imagine you and your white chocolate mocha mixed relatives

rising together each morning with the new sun

sitting down at the first table center stage

like a fresh cut bouquet of American garden roses

as first mother, father, daughters, grandmother

first black family to mother America!

I am a witness!!