poetry Bob Moses: Gardener of Minds

The poet C. Liegh McInnis pays homage to the great African American activist, Robert Moses who led the campaign for civil rights in 1960s Mississippi and later the Algebra Project committed to education equality.

C Liegh McInnis Valley Voices: A Literary Review
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Bob Moses: Gardener of Minds

By C Liegh McInnis

 

Your overalls fit you like a well woven truth,

as you have tilled the fields of our resources,

moving us from sharecroppers to social mathematicians.

You are a gardener, finding the rich minerals of the Earth

in soil left for waste by years of white erosion.

You put your hands deep into the soil of our brains

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and cultivated capacious crops of communities.

You have shown us that the equation for liberation

is love + work = freedom.

You taught us that votes count if we count our votes,

that numbers are our shield and sword

in the battle for equality,

and that all voices matter if we matter to till and raise them.

With your edifying tools, you plowed our minds

and dropped seeds of the movement that swelled

in the bellies of our soul and produced fruit for the ages.

Your Algebra project projects primary numbers

to answer the call for new wheat to harvest

the next yield of mass movement.

C. Liegh McInnis is a poet, short story writer, author of eight books, former editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and internationally noted Prince scholar.