my dream about the second coming

By Lucille Clifton 1936–2010 Lucille Clifton

mary is an old woman without shoes.

she doesn’t believe it.

not when her belly starts to bubble

and leave the print of a finger where

no man touches.

not when the snow in her hair melts away.

not when the stranger she used to wait for

appears dressed in lights at her

kitchen table.

she is an old woman and

doesn’t believe it.

when Something drops onto her toes one night

she calls it a fox

but she feeds it.

Source: Next (1987)

Biography

A prolific and widely respected poet, Lucille Clifton's work emphasizes endurance and strength through adversity, focusing particularly on African-American experience and family life. Awarding the prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize to Clifton in 2007, the judges remarked that “One always feels the looming humaneness around Lucille Clifton’s poems—it is a moral quality that some poets have and some don’t.” In addition to the . . .

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