Poet Nikki Giovanni is someone I much admire -- for her poetry and for her activism -- and recently I had had a chance to see the documentary film "Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project." I valued learning more about Giovanni's life and was reminded to revisit her poetry. In her 1975 collection, The Woman and the Men (of which I have an autographed copy), I re-found her poem "The Way I Feel" and I offer below its mathy final stanza during this 2024 leap year.
from THE WAY I FEEL by Nikki Giovanni
in my mind you're a clock
and i'm the second hand sweeping
around you sixty times an hour
twenty-four hours a day
three-hundred-sixty-five days a year
and an extra day
in leap year
cause that's the way
that's the way
that's the way i feel
about you
from The Women and the Men (William Morrow & Company, New York, 1975)
Posts
