A Circle of Grace

Trapeta Mayson, M.S.S. '95, on healing.

Befitting her role as Philadelphia鈥檚 Poet Laureate, Trapeta Mayson, M.S.S. 鈥95, who delivered the Commencement address for 91传媒鈥檚 2021 graduate degree recipients on May 28, bookended her speech with healing verse.

A native of Liberia, Mayson has received grants and fellowships from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Leeway Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Aspen Institute, among others.

In her Commencement speech, Mayson spoke of the grace and kindness she and her sister received as social work graduate students in the mid 鈥90s, and the grace offered by then-admissions director Nancy Kirby, who 鈥渓ooked at me and my sister and 鈥 didn鈥檛 see us as needy Black girls from a poor neighborhood with an ill mother,鈥 but as 鈥渢wo smart young women who would add value to this College.鈥

Mayson, who received an M.S.S. from GSSWSR, also talked about the need to be 鈥渄eeply human鈥 when encountering those with no interest in receiving or offering grace. 鈥淵ou will have to be a model for those who can鈥檛 see through to the path of human kindness,鈥 she said. 鈥淲ill you accept the charge?鈥

Mayson offered her own 鈥渂it of grace鈥 to the graduates in the form of two poems, including 鈥渋n this season,鈥 an affirming poem that launched the Healing Verse Philly Poetry Line, a toll-free telephone line (1-855-763-6792) that offers callers a 90-second poem by a Philadelphia-connected poet.


in this season

in this season of naming and of holding space
for the quieted and the muted to be amplified
in this season of shifting, of barrier breaking
undoing/unearthing/uprising/leveling
you beloved, may think yourself too small
may think your intentions and acts too slight
may think you are but a fragment, a mere atom
in this place of stars and gazers

but what a world you are
what a sphere of shocking beauty and grace
do you not see how
your one song one breath one step one voice
your one pause one lift one shout one protest
brought us here, keeps us here?

you say that it鈥檚 only a speck you offer,
just a tiny bit, a smidge, a morsel
but do you not see the feast ahead it prepares鈥
how even the remains have purpose?
how it beckons all to your grand table?
how it feeds and fills and expands?

friend, you are a balm in these prickly times
you are a vessel, a refuge, a respite

Published on: 09/22/2021