The new exhibition on the museum’s second floor, New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital, Valuable, has been drawing visitors keen to learn more about how Black families planted their roots in Las Cruces and Albuquerque. At the exhibition’s opening last month, we were particularly honored by Dr. Doris A. Fields, who wrote a poem specifically for the exhibition’s stay at the New Mexico History Museum, through Oct. 9.

She graciously agreed to allow us to reprint it (below) that we might share it with an even larger audience. (Personally, my heart felt an extra thump when she read the line, “Selling goods/not being goods sold.”)

Doris is a performance artist and poet whose work has appeared in publications like the most recent issue of Malpais Review. She holds a doctorate in International Communication Competence,  is an activist and scholar of health care, and teaches a variety of courses at the University of New Mexico, including “Health Issues in Death and Dying” and “Stress Management.” She has conducted workshops for Black women, gifted students and women across cultural differences.

On top of all that, she’s simply one of the warmest people you’ll ever be lucky enough to meet. Her poem has now entered the archives of the Fray Angelico Chavez History Library, and we hope you’ll enjoy it here, as well.

 

Movers and Journeys in Freedom

Sacred                       -ness

Of        footprints

Impressions   in dust

Rising like phoenix                powder

Free to            drift                  to roam

Settle              where Ever

It pleases

That is the implication of freedom

 

Visible:

Seen

I see you                     do you             see

You                  see me

Peer    through eyes

Of  dead         soldiers

Heads of wool

Come alive

Dressed         in foreign fare

Traditional skins

Left on mother continent’s shores

 

Left behind

 

Iridescence    you see

Threads    a cultural quilt                   into being

Being as how

The vital organs of existence

Shed

A shelter of light         -ness

 

Vital:

Critical for survival     freedom

Build   churches                    towns

Blackdom

Vado

Links to Eatonville

 

 

 

Miners            mine    coal                gold

Silver              turquoise

Defying stereotype

 

Lawyers          archeologists             pastors

Soldiers          salesmen                   cowboys

In saddle

Ride                            the range

Imagine

African silhouette in one

Brilliant           orange

Horizon

 

Valuable:

Markets                      cannot             dictate

What   determination            mitigates

 

Retailers                      wholesalers

Selling goods                        not being goods sold

Unquenchable           thirst for knowledge

Drinking freedom like moonshine on a Saturday night

 

Soak up dried desert bones

Swallow life whole

Breathe          in

Life

To break chains

Explore depths of death-defying souls

 

Turn earth                   water               seed

Into apples                 pears                          peas

Quench thirst              for        freedom

 

Resolve that   skills count

More than color

Ingenious        to wash alkali             from soil

Enrich dirt                   with brown sweat

Talk of promise

Teach the soil                        its own potential

Black soil                   black dirt

Fertile as Africa         herself

Cooks             porters            rail workers

Link     with Chinese             to join

West with East                      South to North

 

Find faith in one another

Hearers of G-d

Finding G-d                inside

Outside           the limiting      expectation

 

Visible                        Vital                            Valuable

These             are the sounds           of freedom

 

Doris Fields

05/14/ 2011

Mei