Santa Barbara’s new poet laureate shares her words

In honor of National Poetry Month, the Mayor of Santa Barbara announced the city’s new poet laureate. Sojourner Kincaid Rolle has been a fixture in Santa Barbara for quite some time. She’s written seven books and six plays, and has been leading poetry workshops since 1992.

We asked Kincaid Rolle to stop by our studio last week and share a couple of her poems.

A Space Where A Poem Ought Be

I’ve known of missing poems before

poems stronger than the suppressing hand

poems more powerful than the invisibility

poems that speak from the realm of the soul

from the place that needs no facade

the place unpalpable where the poem touches

a father’s unrenderable gaze

absent from the family photograph

frozen in clenched smile abstraction

hovering somewhere near the unfathomable

a hole where a heart once lay

cached between bone and muscle

a conduit for that which makes life livable

its beat but an echo its rhythm but a spasm of memory

hurt where a friendship once was

its demise never anticipated

its loss never contemplated

it measure infinite

space where a leg ought be

the missing limb but bits of flesh femur blood

soft shrapnel on a once abandoned war ground

the mined soil holding secret its maiming terror

nothing where something ought be

it is said that to which the missing was adjoined

the left behind

mourns its disattached

one sees the shining knee –

the favored other

there is emptiness longing

grief is spoken

and desire

— Sojourner Kincaid Rolle

A Song of Santa Barbara

We honor the first people of this place:

Chumash, Barbereños.

We honor the elders

the keepers of this ancient culture.

O’ the beautiful city by the sea,

city by the side of the Royal Road.

Stately palms sway in harmony with the wind

and the soaring hawks.

Dancers, yellow hibiscus blossoms

in their hair, twirl and clap.

Magenta bougainvilleas snake along the pathways,

crawl across scape of land,

climb the stucco walls.

In the name of Saint Barbara,

patron of mariners and surfers,

we pay homage to the dolphin

relating the legend of the Rainbow Bridge.

We honor those whose forebears

built a life here.

We know their names.

They are as familiar

as the names off our streets,

our paseos, our placitas:

De la Guerra,

Gutierrez,

Carrillo,

Cota,

Ortega…

We take shelter beneath

the Moreton bay fig,

a canopy of hope.

We hang our holiday lights

on the Norfolk Island pine.

We are known for graceful palm

the lavender jacaranda,

the California scrub oak.

Caretakers

to the watershed,

we lift our eyes

to hills.

Our creeks — Mission,

Sycamore, Arroyo Burro —

some dry beds,

carry the precious liquid

more valued than gold.

We are keepers of bees.

Hummingbirds flitter

among birds of paradise.

Monarchs graze in our front yards,

traveling the yellow-blossomed coast

clustering in the warm embrace

of our eucalyptus groves.

We share our plenty with the seagulls

and the crows.

We hold sanctuary for the California condor,

the bald eagle, the brown pelican

the snowy plover, the green turtle,

the island fox.

We wake each day

to the sounds of a mixed flock.

Mockingbirds serenade us

through long afternoon into night.

Singing a song of Santa Barbara.

….

— Sojourner Kincaid Rolle

April 7, 2015