On this day in 1902, poet and author Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes is among my favorite poets. Every day, I see one of his poems framed next to a picture of my late friend Steve R that sits on the bookcase behind me. It’s a beautiful poem, but not the subject of this post.
I found an Inauguration Day group on Flickr. It contains several thousand photos, so I set it to slideshow one day last week and watched pictures scroll by while I did other things at my desk. I love looking at photos of Washington, D.C., any time. I know what it is to be one among a crowd of people on the National Mall after having been there as a volunteer and panel maker in 1996 with the NAMES Quilt. To see in every direction buildings and monuments that are so familiar from a lifetime of pictures. To be in the middle of it with thousands of people.
Although what I really wanted to study as I watched these Inauguration Day photos were people’s faces–not famous people or politicians or celebrities, just average people–I often paused to look at things.
A ledge full of cups: Starbucks, McDonald’s coffee, along with plastic Pepsi and Coke bottles, empty juice containers.
Baby carriages. Flags and posters. Newspapers. Banners and sweatshirts with slogans. Cameras and iPhones. Blankets, bags, and gloves. Binoculars. Name tags. Subway passes.
Hats pulled so low and scarves wound with such determination against the cold that sometimes people were little more than eyes bearing witness.
And buttons. Lots of buttons. Including one that answered this poem by Langston Hughes, and in so doing, made poetry beautifully relevant in the national dialog:
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
