Dear Editor,
Here is an ode I wrote to the late Sir Sidney Poitier, (February 20, 1927 to January 6, 2022).
If only I could find
That poem of Sidney Poitier
In one of my several
Hundred notebooks,
One of more than
A dozen poems that
I have written of him,
How happy I would be
I could feel in every cell
Of my anatomy
How just-right that one was
Lost somewhere in one
Of my many notebooks
Before I was able to type it out
Written 12 or so years ago,
That poem now is like
A needle in a haystack,
My poem, to sir, with love
Oh, God, now Sidney Poitier,
At 94, has passed away,
On January 6th, four days ago
And what can I say in verse
Of who has meant so much to me
I have a Bachelor of Arts
Degree in Speech & Drama,
First step to follow in his footsteps
Bahamian teenager, inspired
To become an actor, a movie star
Oh, but the almighty ordained
That I blaze another trail,
That I give my life to writing instead,
To being a poet, and I obeyed,
Regardless of income,
Regardless of the sacrifice
That that is, that this has been
Followed Sidney Poitier though
All the way to as far as he could take me
I recall following Dylan Thomas,
Ernest Hemingway,
William Carlos Williams,
William Shakespeare, similarly
Until I was where there could
Be no guide but God
Who made me individual,
Who made me unique
It is that one unrepeated, unrepeatable
Entity that each of us is,
That we are called to be
Precious, holy, divine because
We were made once, like
No one in creation whoever was
Oh, to define self, to self-define,
Like Poitier, like Mandela,
Like Peter O’Toole, like Peter Ustinov,
Who show us how to self-proclaim,
How to self-embrace
How to be as beautiful as when
In season, a Poui tree blossoms
So many flowers that
They are raining down,
That they are falling off,
Forming a ring of
Petals around where
The tree leaves the ground
Like those ones, so very tall
And so very large
In the front yard
Of The Dundas Centre
For the Performing Arts,
Where the heart
Of the dramatic arts
Beats on, beats still
© Obediah Michael Smith
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