James DePreist, one of the first African American conductors to achieve international renown, was also an accomplished poet, publishing two volumes of poetry: This Precipice Garden (1989) and The Distant Siren (1986). Read selected poems below, as well as Maya Angelou’s and William Stafford’s praise for Jimmy’s resonant verse.

Selections from This Precipice Garden

University of Portland Press, Portland, Oregon (1986)

SHOULD YOU FEEL

Should you feel,
when I have left,
a warm and loving
unseen gaze, it will be me,
in softest
thought
caressing you
with
now.

IF WE MEET AGAIN

If we meet again
will it be
to sing our affirmations,
re-entering the shared tale
with seamless ease?
Or will it be
as if for the last time:
an ending,
layers of living later,
with no bridge of nostalgia
to span
the water of years?

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN

I should have been
content to know
from the distant safety
of an unpursued
beginning,
that you exist.
It might have sufficed,
a conspiracy of dreams and the intangible
pain-free permanence of imagining.
It should have been enough
to lean upon the gate,
glimpse the sudden beauty, and remember.

But it’s from inside that now I see
these paths around, and
entranced,
approach the joy-laden edge of this
precipice garden.

Selections from This Distant Siren

Willamette University Press, Salem, Oregon (1989)

GROUNDED ENOUGH

Grounded enough
to fly
           without
                           fear