I have stood on the
peaky mountain in rainbows
harp, sword in my hands
Adapted from this passage in Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston (JB Lippincott Company Philadelphia, 1942), where Ms. Hurston writes:
Well, that is the way things stand up to now. I can look back and see sharp shadows, high lights, and smudgy in-betweens. I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrappen in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.
My kinfolks, and my “skin-folks” are dearly loved. My own circumference of everyday life is there. But I see their same virtues and vices everywhere I look. So I give you all my right hand of fellowship and love, and hope for the same from you. In my eyesight, you lose nothing by not looking just like me. I will remember you all in my good thoughts, and I ask you kindly to do the same for me. Not only just me. You, who play the zig-zag lightning of power over the world, with the grumbling thunder in your wake, think kindly of those who walk in the dust. And you who walk in humble places, think kindly too, of others. There has been no proof in the world so far that you would be less arrogant if you held the lever of power in your hands. Let us all be kissing-friends. Consider that with tolerance and patience, we godly demons may breed a noble world in a few hundred generations or so. Maybe all of us who do not have the good fortune to meet, or meet again, in this world, will meet at a barbecue.
No Haiku For You 