Paper details
1 Picture a woman riding thunder on the legs of slavery …
2 Picture her kissing our spines saying no to the eyes of slavery … 3 Picture her rotating the earth into a
shape of lives becoming … 4 Picture her leaning into the eyes of our birth clouds … 5 Picture this woman
saying no to the constant yes of slavery … 6 Picture a woman jumping rivers her legs inhaling moons … 7
Picture her ripe with seasons of legs … running … 8 Picture her tasting the secret corners of woods … 9
Picture her saying: You have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars, to
change the world … 10 Imagine her words: Every great dream begins with a dreamer … 11 Imagine her
saying: I freed a thousand slaves, could have freed a thousand more if they only knew they were slaves …
12 Imagine her humming: How many days we got fore we taste freedom … 13 Imagine a woman asking:
How many workers for this freedom quilt … 14 Picture her saying: A live runaway could do great harm by
going back but a dead runaway could tell no secrets … 15 Picture the daylight bringing her to woods full of
birth moons … 16 Picture John Brown shaking her hands three times saying: General Tubman. General
Tubman. General Tubman. 17 Picture her words: There’s two things I got a right to: death or liberty … 18
Picture her saying no to a play called Uncle Tom’s Cabin: I am the real thing … 19 Picture a Black woman:
could not read or write trailing freedom refrains … 20 Picture her face turning southward walking down a
Southern road … 21 Picture this woman freedom bound … tasting a people’s preserved breath … 22
Picture this woman of royalty … wearing a crown of morning air … 23 Picture her walking, running, reviving
a country’s breath … 24 Picture black voices leaving behind lost tongues … Source: Poetry (April 2018)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/146231/haiku-and-tanka-for-harriet-tubman
From the readings this week, pick a poem to analyze. What is the primary meaning? Quote text from the
poem to serve as evidence of the meaning you find. Two Paragraph Answer.