New York In My Mind Poem by Almedia Knight-Oliver

New York in My Mind


Late spring in 1954…I stepped of the “Streamline”… then onto Pennsylvania station wearing a pretty print dress… made from one or more of Momma’s best feed sacks…a suitcase encircled by course braids and a cute bow on the side…that I totted, and trailing out onto 33rd street behind the man to his parked car waiting to take me and my sister to live with another waiting behind (in the hall-room) in a Brooklyn Brownstone. Taking form in my mind were: Fried fat back atop a couple greasy flapjacks (just out the oven of the iron stove) and savoring blackstrap molasses slowly awakening my palate
My sister’s boyfriend squeezed his car between the towering brick buildings-it seemed- unlike the single family homes that doted the lush green country side, back home…and oak trees standing up tough, widely spread limbs protecting the dirt roads…I’d just left down south
my Moma, the only safeguard I'd ever known...

Many happenings and events filled the spaces between five decades and half years
After that balmy, Sunday in 1954 that, my Momma felt that I must leave behind.
I’ve lived in Brooklyn ever since… integrating my Southern experiences with New York’s culture: poetry and writing, theater and arts, parks and botanical gardens and so much more…! Its such delight marveling the real and imagine with New York in my mind, and a generation of minds: four children, grand and great grandchildren…now my heart holds memories of New York and my home way back then…




By
Almedia Knight-Oliver
December 28,2013