Two Story-Poems of reaching across culture gaps to forge new understandings and race unity

Today on Riehlife I’m featuring two poems that came to me simultaneously from my father, Erwin A. Thompson, and my writing friend Arletta Dawdy. Both, curiously, sound similar chords, perhaps on different instruments, so I wanted to run them together.

Artletta’s poem presents a coming of age story…a searching and a finding that goes beyond the easy assumptions of a young girl’s niavete.

My father’s poem tells the story of generations of an African American family, the only Black family on our lane, Riehl Lane. The Freeman’s were just about the only African Americans I knew before I went to live in Africa for five years and challenge my own assumptions of a young girl’s coming of age.