Reedbed Diaspora by Baraka Blue

Oakland-based poet, Baraka Blue, has released a new book of poems entitled ‘Reedbed Diaspora.’ The name is drawn from the opening lines of Rumi’s epic spiritual poem the Masnavi. As the title indicates Baraka’s new book is a window into the deepest human yearnings for return to the root of our existence. This sacred bereavement – the “baraka blues” – threads through the poems a beautiful melancholy. The imagery is stunning: “The sound of tears forming behind the eyelids of unborn children. This loneliness woven into pregnant mothers womb rhythms. All of us prenatally baptized in blue.”

The pages are sprinkled with not only pain, but hope and a touch of humor, as well as gems of wisdom illuminating the sometimes treacherous path back home. He writes,

“Let’s stand at this crossroads

and laugh at our death

and cry and our laughing

and yell at our silence

and be moved by our stillness.”

And elsewhere,

“don’t assume the map

is wrong

because some people with the map

are lost.”

And simply yet profoundly,

“I never forgot who you always were.”

These are poems of a lover who has lost his beloved. Yet there remains a sense that the love itself transcends time and space and somehow makes separation not only bearable but beautiful. One wonders at the ability of the author to give the poems such an intimacy. It’s as if entering the lover’s chamber and stumbling upon the tear stained freshly inked letters to lost love.

Baraka Blue is currently on a book release tour in Europe and North Africa. Reedbed Diaspora is available here: www.reedbeddiaspora.com