Category: From the Soul

By Ernie McCray

I’ve always taken
Thanksgiving Day
literally
as a time to be thankful,
to be grateful
for just being,
having nothing to do
with colonizing Pilgrims
breaking bread with Indians
or any such thing
and as I look back at my memories
of Thanksgiving
with my family

by Ernie McCray

I was just thinking
about Blair and Kimberly,
two people very dear to me,
thinking how
unbelievable it is
that it’s been
some 50 years
since we met
when I was the principal
at John Muir Alternative School
and they were among a population
of students

by Ernie McCray

Just got back from
New York City,
still feeling the electricity
that wonderful town
always vibrates through me,
as I’ve never ended a trip there
without thinking
of better ways
for people to live
and this visit
was no different.

by Ernie McCray

Looking at my
seven-year-old granddaughter
Marley’s drawing
of the smiling faces
of her family,
her mom,
her dad,
and her grandma and me
and her brother and her
and Whiskey and Baby,
cats of long standing
in the family,
well, the portrait
soothes me,
like a breath
of needed fresh air,

by Ernie McCray

Stretched out,
kicked back
in an easy chair,
alone, at home,
I asked my boo, “Alexa,”
to play me some
Hank Crawford songs,
making such a request,
from time to time,
to ease my mind
during these troubling times,

by Ernie McCray

Black Lives Matter
recently asked
what Black joy means to me.
Well, Black joy just happens to be
in my DNA.
Passed along
through the ages
from Africa
as a way for us
in the diaspora,
to survive in a world
that would just as soon
do without us,

by Ernie McCray

In the
winter of my existence
I feel gratitude
for being given
so many years of life,
life that’s been lived out
in a universe
that consistently
lays before us
an array of circumstances
over which we have little to
no control,

by Ernie McCray

The devastation and human pain
Hurricane Ian
has left in its wake,
is so depressing
and disheartening
especially since we’re to blame
for its overwhelming intensity,
as we’ve essentially
turned our backs
to more life sustaining sources of energy
like the wind and the sun,
insisting on feeding Mother Nature
fossil-fuel-fed
greenhouse gas emissions

by Ernie McCray

This democracy
of ours
is seen
as an experiment,
one where every citizen,
more or less possesses
the right to life and liberty
in a pursuit for happiness.
But one would be negligent
not mentioning that this experiment
has lacked a hypothesis
by which
America could test
probabilities for success,
this neglect
leaving some people,
from the beginning,
behind the rest

by Ernie McCray

Ron DeSantis,
the governor of the
state of Florida,
has recently been referred to,
because of something he
put some Venezuelans through,
as a “prankster,”
but I see him for what he is,
a gangster,
a human trafficker,
a pimp in disguise

by Ernie McCray

I might be in trouble
if I were in a classroom today,
approaching learning
as I did in the early 60’s,
trying to hip my students
to what was happening in their world,
first, letting them know who their teacher was
as a living breathing human being,
by telling them of my upbringing
as a Black boy
in a city

by Ernie McCray

I was just thinking
if I had stolen
a bunch of classified
U.S. documents
and hid them in my basement
and the FBI had to come and get them,
and I had the nerve
to ask for a
“Special Master Review”
of some kind