Poems: Let Me Begin Again

By Major Jackson , Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 26, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Let me begin again as a quiet thought
in the shape of a shell slowly examined
by a brown child on a beach at dawn
straining to see their future. Let me begin
this time knowing the drumming in my dreams
is me inheriting the earth, is morning
lighting up the rivers. Let me burn
my vanities: old music in the pines, sifters
of scotch, a day moon like a signature
of night. This time, let me circle
the island of my fears only once then
live like a raging waterfall and grow
a magnificent mustache. Let me not ever be
the birdcage or the serrated blade or
the empty season. Dear Glacier, Dear Sea
of Stars, Dear Leopards disintegrating
at the outer limits of our greed; soon we will
encounter you only in motivational tweets.
Reader, I should have married you sooner.
This time, let me not sleep like the prophet who
believes he’s seen infinity. Let me run
at break-neck speeds toward sceneries
of doubt. I have no more dress rehearsals
to attend. Look closer: I am licking my lips.

Major Jackson is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Absurd Man (W. W. Norton, 2020), Roll Deep (W. W. Norton, 2015), and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia, 2002), winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

About This Poem

“Writing is my form of action, one that finds me—maybe owed to our global health, political and climate crises— acclimating to an ever-increasing hunger to connect with a reader. The poem highlights the possibilities and joys of self-renewal and the promises of a new tomorrow. As a parent, my favorite mental pictures are of my children, individually off alone, looking curiously into an object. The poem, which is inspired by Philip Levine’s poem of the same title, quite seriously gifts the reader that sustaining image—a black child in wondrous thought.”
—Major Jackson