Clint Smith's 'Above Ground' explores both the joys and tribulations of parenthood through poetry

Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on Aug. 31, 2023. Click here for that audio.

In "Above Ground," Clint Smith writes about the everyday joy, anxiety and exhaustion of parenthood with young children. He also writes about the legacy of slavery and racism and how that history shaped the lives of his ancestors and continues into the lives of his children.

Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the nonfiction book "How the Word Is Passed: Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America." He joins Here & Now's Scott Tong.

By Clint Smith

Your National Anthem
Today, a Black man who was once a Black boy
like you got down on one of his knees and laid
his helmet on the grass as this country sang

its ode to the promise it never kept
and the woman in the grocery store line in front
of us is on the phone and she is telling someone

on the other line that this Black man who was once
a Black boy like you should be grateful we live
in a country where people aren’t killed for things like this

you know, she says, in some places they would hang you
for such a blatant act of disrespect, maybe he should
go live there instead of here so he can appreciate what he has

then she turns around
and sees you sitting in the grocery cart surrounded
by lettuce and yogurt and frozen chicken thighs

and you smile at her with your toothless-gum-smile
and she says that you are the cutest baby she has
ever seen and tells me how I must feel so lucky

to have such a beautiful baby boy and I thank her
for her kind words even though I know I should not
thank her, because I know that you will not always

be a Black boy but one day you may be a Black man
and you may decide your country hasn’t kept
its promise to you either and this woman, or another

like her, will forget you were ever this boy and they
will make you into something else and tell you
to be grateful for what you’ve been given.

Above Ground
For weeks, we can’t go outside without the cicadas’
song wrapping itself around the three of us like a quilt.
The tree in our front yard has become their sanctuary,
a place where they all seem to congregate

and sing their first and final songs.
We get closer, and see the way their exoskeletons
ornament the bark like golden ghosts,
shadows abandoned by their bodies

searching for new life.
One of you is four years old. One of you is two.
The next time the cicadas rise out of the earth
you will be twenty-one and nineteen.

I think of how much might change between these cycles.
How much of our planet will still be intact?
What sort of societies will the cicadas return to
when they next make their way up from the earth?

When they first arrive, you are both frightened
of this new noise that hangs in the air,
of these small orange- and- black-winged bodies
that fall from the sky like new rain.

They don’t bite, I say.
But neither of you believes me.
So I reach out to one of the branches
and allow one of the orange-eyed creatures to climb

onto my finger. You both watch it roam around my hand
as it becomes familiar with the flesh of my palm,
your eyes widening at the revelation that this infrequent
visitor has no interest in piercing my skin.

And maybe that is enough, because now
you both try to pick up cicadas from the ground
and collect them in buckets as if they are treasure.
And maybe they are.

Maybe treasure is in what dies almost
as quickly as it rises from the earth.
Maybe treasure is anything that reminds you
what a miracle it is to be alive.

All at Once
The redwoods are on fire in California. A flood submerges a neighborhood
that sat quiet on the coast for three centuries. A child takes their first steps
and tumbles into a father’s arms. Two people in New Orleans fall in love
under an oak tree whose branches bend like sorrow. A forest of seeds are
planted in new soil. A glacier melts into the ocean and the sea climbs closer
to the land. A man comes home from war and holds his son for the first
time. A man is killed by a drone that thinks his jug of water is a bomb. Your
best friend relapses and isn’t picking up the phone. Your son’s teacher calls
to say he stood up for another boy in class. A country below the equator
ends a twenty-year civil war. A soldier across the Atlantic fires the shot that
begins another. The scientists find a vaccine that will save millions of peo-
ple’s lives. Your mother’s cancer has returned and doctors say there is noth-
ing else they can do. There is a funeral procession in the morning and a
wedding in the afternoon. The river that gives us water to drink is the same
one that might wash us away.

Copyright © 2023 by Clint Smith