I WAS SWIMMING with friends in a creek when our host led us to a waterfall where a blanket of water dumped into a deep pool. The only way to get to the small cavern behind the fall was to swim below the churning surface. My friends dove under and popped up happily behind the curtain of water. I tried, but the water pounded my back and pushed me back to where I started. The next time, I approached it sideways and reached out my hand for a friend to pull me through.
This memory was fresh when I talked with Ashley M. Jones, poet laureate of Alabama. Her latest book Lullaby for the Grieving is a collection of poems that plumb the depths of grief over her father’s passing as well as grief for the horrors of slavery in American history and ongoing genocide in Gaza.
She told me the title came during a workshop that poet Palavi Ahuja led along the Sipsey River in western Alabama. After a hike, Ahuja asked participants to write a lullaby. For Jones, a lullaby is less about how to get to sleep, and more about “describing where you are ... where you could be and giving you a pathway to pause.”
Swimming upstream wasn’t working; it almost pulled me under.
We all need sleep, but as Jones described it, “sometimes rest can be finding a better way to move through. Like instead of always going directly against the current, is there another way to do the thing we’re trying to do?”
Her words brought me back to the waterfall. Swimming upstream wasn’t working; it almost pulled me under. As soon as my friend pointed out another way and reached out a hand, I found a place of rest.
Jones talked about her grief as a “very strong current,” one that she “can’t just walk straight through.” Her metaphor was a helpful reminder that even on dry land it is hard not to feel smothered by the deluge of bad news, cruel politics, and personal griefs strong enough to sink us. “I’m not powerful enough some days to just dive right in. So I have to find a way around,” she said.
In the titular poem she wrote by the river, Jones describes her navigation of grief’s uncertain terrain:
small steps, like prayers—
each one a hope exhaled
into the trees. please,
let me enter. please, let me
leave whole.
As an activist, Jones sees her poetry as “a way to take another current,” a way to call out injustice and inspire social transformation. “I’m not a politician,” she said, “I never will be. I don’t think that’s always the most effective way to do anything, really. I don’t think arguing is always the best way to talk about something difficult.”
Whether it’s a poem, a prayer, a song, or a friend’s hand reaching out, it is good to know there is a way through.
Josina Guess is a Sojourners associate editor and a contributor to Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic.
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