DISCERNMENT (Poem)

Hey, y’all!

For Day 11 of National Poetry Writing Month, the prompt is to write a poem that takes as its starting point something overheard that made you laugh, or something someone told you once that struck you as funny.

Here’s my poem:

DISCERNMENT

By Farah Lawal Harris, © 2023

“I thank God for me!”

she shouted with

Southern, Christian drawl

and surrender to struggle.

My eyes began to water.

There’s something about

another Black woman’s tears

that ropes me in like

umbilical ancestral connection.

Empathy rushes over me,

along with a touch of gullibility.

But I been here.

Time and time again

been roped in.

I’ve been prayin’ to God for discernment,

for the ability to sense bullshit before I smell it.

And now I got it.

Something about those

Southern testifyin’ tears

raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

I rejected the rope being offered,

trusted the spirit within, that

umbilical ancestral connection

and thanked God for me,

not hardened, but paying attention.