What You Hope
A reading of "This, Our Passing: White Rock and Old City Cemetery" by T.J. Anderson
At this age you notice things;
the way this late moon morning
slowly vanishes behind the willows,
the way the sun comes rising
up to give light on the opening
of what you hope
will be a new day for all of us.
Today’s poetry reading is audio-only. Link here to read along.
The Bridge of Lament project on which I’m collaborating has the honor today of publishing a poem by poet and professor T.J. Anderson. The poem is a tribute to his great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Anderson, one of the five Black councilmen who served on the Lynchburg City Council in the 1880’s during Reconstruction.1 You can guess what happened next: Union support moved out, Jim Crow moved in, and there wasn’t another Black council member until Mayor M.W. “Teedy” Thornhill Jr. in 1990. There was the Great Migration north, which Anderson references in his poem:
Locomotive engines on tracks, lonely whistles that called your children
to pack their bags and move North, a place you’ve never been.
I know why you let them go
One of the many things I appreciate about Anderson’s poem is its dual setting: White Rock Cemetery, which was the first independent African American cemetery established in my city,2 and the Old City Cemetery, which is a now also a botanical garden, a place thriving with nature. A place I love to take my family. A place I love to wander on my own, caught up in the beauty, the flowers, the birds under the overhanging trees— “to hear the shutter of falling leaves / to see the same ancient oak that witnesses our passing” —placing my feet with reverence among the soul-seeds that wait for a better day to spring forth, whole.
In his poem, Anderson references a new day, one that he hopes will rise “for all of us.” The way this vision of justice, of real neighbor-love, of true peace, intertwines with the nature images in the poem’s lines makes my soul sing. Makes my soul sing with an urgency. With a hope.
Oh Great Grandfather, it is always here that I see you
standing between long limbed trees and bright celestial sun,
between the clouds of freedom that telegraph your dreams.
Jefferson Anderson “was born January 5, 1850, of slave parents in Amherst County. He acquired a common school education which was sufficient to operate a grocery business at Madison and Twelfth Streets.” Day 5: Five Years of Equal Representation (substack.com)