Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, and today is Friday, January 21st.

And today I'm going to read for you a poem that was read for yesterday in history in America.

Yesterday was January 20th, and that's inauguration day every four years. And so today I'm going to read for you an inaugural

poem that was written in 1993 by American poet Maya Angelou for the inauguration of William J. Clinton

to the presidency. Maya Angelou was born in 1928, and she lived until 2014.

She lived a very long and fruitful life.

She was an author, a poet, a historian, a songwriter, a playwright.

She was the first black woman director in Hollywood.

She was also a performer in her own rights and a stage and screen producer and a civil rights activist.

So she was a very busy lady and a very productive lady.

She's justifiably and deservedly famous in American letters for her contributions to poetry and more.

And this poem is called On the Pulse of Morning. And it's quite a long poem, so I'm only

going to read it once, so I'll make my comments now. At the center of this poem are three very

heavily symbolic images, a rock, a river, a tree. So as this poem washes over you, it's kind of a lot

to take in at one sitting. So I would invite you to look it up yourself if you want to meditate

on it a little bit more. But as it washes over you, think about these three images,

the immovable rock, the ever-changing and nourishing

river, and the thriving and flourishing, deeply rooted tree. This is a poem that, like every great

poem, works on three levels, the level of the self. This is a poem that relates and speaks to each individual.

It's also a poem that speaks to the nation. And of course, that's very intentional on the part

of this particular poem because it's an inaugural poem. So it's speaking to our country,

our society. It's also a poem, so it's speaking to our country, our society.

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