Jazz After Dinner

From "I Am a Black Man"

I am a Black man

my history written with blood

some sweet songs of sorrow

are composed for my soul

and I

can be seen plowing in the fields

Can be heard

humming

in the night

In these poems of celebration and endurance, Leonard A. Slade Jr. addresses the human need to be connected not only to the physical "now," but also to the other lives and other music we pass through during our lives. Slade's unique voice exposes the sweetness, the sorrow, and the humor of life's celebrations and struggles, but above all is the importance of love and the reliance on God and in faith for transcendence. These are poems to help us to endure, to grow, and to triumph.