Aqeela El-Amin Bakheit wrote the following poem in 1992 to commemorate Black History Month, which is celebrated in February.

The poem, “Where is Mama?”, was published in “Wind In The Night Sky,” a publication of The National Library of Poetry in Owings Mills, Maryland in 1993.

Where Is Mama?

Mama! Where is mama? And papa too

Boys and girls just my size being patted on the head and kissed on the cheek

Babes, fair skinned, fine hair, being nursed by the “darker than blue”

Hurrying, scurrying little feet

Tiny hands holding books, chalk and slate

Close the door behind them now

Hard, cold bread, not enough to eat

Put on the sack

Out to the field in the blazing sun

Where is mama? Oh! If only she and papa would come

Work all day. Bone weary. Too tired to eat

Boys and girls just my size sitting on the great white porch

Reading to each other, talking things I don't know

The aroma in the air of apple pie

All the children get a slice

But none for me

These children, just my size, but different

Mama, where is mama? She belongs to another.

Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Photo by UNL Publications and Photography.

My grandmother Moser made wonderful cherry pies from fruit from a tree just across the road from her house, and I have loved fruit trees ever since. A cherry tree is all about giving. Here’s a poem by Nathaniel Perry, who lives in Virginia, giving us an orchard made of words.

Remaking a Neglected Orchard

It was a good idea, cutting away

the vines and ivy, trimming back

the chest-high thicket lazy years

had let grow there. Though it wasn’t for lack

of love for the trees, I’d like to point out.

Years love trees in a way we can’t

imagine. They just don’t use the fruit

like us; they want instead the slant

of sun through narrow branches, the buckshot

of rain on these old cherries. And we,

now that I think on it, want those

things too, we just always and desperately

want the sugar of the fruit, the best

we’ll get from this irascible land:

sweetness we can gather for years,

new stains staining the stains on our hands.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Nathaniel Perry, and reprinted from Gettysburg Review, Vol. 23, no. 1, Spring 2010, by permission of Nathaniel Perry and the publisher.

The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

The workshop will be presented by the award-winning garden and landscape photographer, Saxon Holt, and will be held on opening day of the Show, Thursday, April 7, at 5 p.m.

Because space is limited, you are encouraged to register now by visiting: www.CalStateShows.com.

Saxon Holt's photography workshop will be presented in two parts: a lecture presentation and an interactive hands-on workshop. The workshop will be held immediately following the closing of the Show to the general public giving participants unlimited access to the featured gardens.

The lecture presentation titled, “What is a Good Garden Photograph” will present published works by Holt. He will talk about getting to the essence of what a photograph can do and explain how and why the photograph was taken. Specific tips on composition and what to look for when photographing a garden will be offered.

The 90-minute hands-on workshop titled, “Think Like a Camera,” will then begin. Holt will be joined by participants to tour the gardens featured at the Show. Here, participants will receive some very basic camera technical information about depth of field and white balance. They will then have the opportunity to begin taking their own photographs. Holt will be available to participants for help and suggestions.

At the end of the workshop, everyone will have the opportunity to upload their three best photos for review and critiquing by Holt.

To sign-up for the workshop, visit www.CalStateShows.com. Participants must have a camera with manual controls and a tripod. Workshop fee is $70 and includes admission to the California State Flower, Food & Garden Show and VIP parking next to the pavilion.

Holt is the photography program director at the San Francisco Botanical Gardens as well as the author of many award-winning books including his most recent, “The American Meadow Garden.” This book won the gold award in 2010 from the Garden Writers of America. Additional information on Holt can be found at his website: www.saxonholt.com .

The California State Flower, Food & Garden Show will be held April 7, 8, 9 and 10, at Cal Expo, Pavilion Building in Sacramento, California. For additional Show information, please visit www.CalStateShows.com.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Local entertainer Andre Williams will perform with his talented Andre Williams Trio at Silk's in Clearlake on Thursday, Feb. 10.

The performance will start at 5:30 p.m. and continue to as late as 8:30 p.m. at Williams' Silk's Bar & Grill.

Williams will put his incredible voice to work on old favorites.

Silk's Bar & Grill is located at 14825 Lakeshore Drive, Clearlake.

Call 707-995-7455 to reserve a table, as seating is limited.

The entertainment world (or at least that portion of interest to TV writers), as it relates to the fortunes of the NBC TV network, has been greatly affected during the month of January by major events.

First of all, there was the endurance run of the biannual TV critics press tour, where lowly scribes get the lowdown on upcoming programs from network and cable brass.

On the larger stage, TV writers and the general public have seen the nation’s largest cable operator, Comcast, moving forward with acquiring a majority stake in the broadcasting company NBC Universal.

Though the Comcast-NBC merger has now been approved by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, the matter was still pending when TV critics had their day with the NBC TV network earlier in January.

For the first time in memory, the NBC Universal press tour day did not include a session with the network’s top executives.

Last summer, we had the give-and-take conversation with Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment.

This month, you were lucky to talk to one of the ubiquitous NBC pages who wear blazers sporting at least multiple NBC lapel pins – kind of like that guy on the “30 Rock” show.

I guess no one wanted to talk about the then-pending final approval of the Comcast-NBC merger. Or maybe they just wanted to avoid unpleasant chatter about former president and CEO of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, who was probably one of the least popular TV executives of all time and was unceremoniously dumped last fall.

Another reason not to talk to executives is that apparently all of the NBC midseason shows have been launched.

First, there’s “The Cape,” which should excite fanboys of the superhero genre in a big way. The show has a unique combination of campy, cheesy fun and dark superhero drama.

In the premiere episode of “The Cape,” Vince Faraday (David Lyons) is a cop framed for crimes he did not commit, forcing him to team up with a group of carnival misfits to take a new identity, fight crime and win his family back.

Fueled by a desire to reunite with his wife Dana (Jennifer Ferrin) and son Trip (Ryan Wynott), Faraday becomes “The Cape” – his son’s favorite comic book superhero – taking the law into his own hands and battling the criminal forces that have overtaken the fictional Palm City.

Evil billionaire Peter Fleming (James Frain) is The Cape’s nemesis, who moonlights at a twisted killer named Chess. Political intrigue also comes into the picture when Fleming’s corporation seeks to privatize Palm City’s prisons.

Now that “Boston Legal” had ended its run, writer and producer David E. Kelley returns with “Harry’s Law,” a show that is billed as a legal “dramedy,” a term that implies the combination of drama and comedy.

From what I can tell, this new series, starring the talented Kathy Bates, is more unintentionally ludicrous than it is either a comedy or drama.

The premise is that Harriet “Harry” Korn (Bates) is a curmudgeonly ex-patent lawyer abruptly fired from her blue-chip law firm, forcing her to search for a fresh start.

This leads her to team up with a young legal hotshot (Nate Corddry) that she meets in a car accident and a ditzy assistant (Brittany Snow).

They set up shop in a former shoe store located in a ghetto neighborhood of Cincinnati. It’s a bit lame that they are selling shoes and providing legal services in the same storefront.

One little known fact is that David E. Kelley wrote the part of Harry for a cantankerous grumpy old man. To her credit, Kathy Bates does a good job of turning the grouchy Harry into a crabby Harriet.

“Perfect Couples” is a romantic comedy that is new only in the sense that it stars a bunch of people who did not appear in “Friends.” Otherwise, the story about three flawed couples sounds an awful lot like “Traffic Light,” which will get its start in early February on the FOX network.

At least in the FOX series, one of the three guys has trouble maintaining a relationship any longer than three weeks.

“Perfect Couples” involves three couples struggling through various stages of commitment, whether ideal or not.

Olivia Munn’s Leigh is a self-appointed relationship guru who makes it her duty to mold her jock husband Rex (Hayes MacArthur) and the other couples into her ideal of marriage.

For his part, Rex is a reformed party guy channeling his athletic energy into a competitive drive to be the ideal mate.

Kyle Bornheimer’s Dave and his wife Julia (Christine Woods) appear to be the fun couple worth watching.

The good news for NBC Universal, or should I say Comcast-NBC Universal, is that this media conglomerate also has cable outfits Syfy, USA, Oxygen and Bravo in its orbit. Some of the best series, to my mind, are on USA.

“White Collar,” recently returned for its second season on USA, is a fun crime caper show starring the charismatic Matt Bomer as an ex-con who now assists the FBI.

USA has also just launched “Fairly Legal,” a legal drama that works off the premise that San Francisco mediator Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi), formerly an attorney, returns to the practice of law upon the sudden death of her father, whose law firm is now being run by the evil stepmother (Virginia Williams).

The tension is palpable as Kate must now report to her deceased father’s spouse, a person relatively the same age.

It will be interesting to see how Comcast-NBC rolls out its fall programming during this summer’s press tour.

I am comforted by the fact that Jeff Zucker won’t be one of the network executives on a panel discussion.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.