I, like most everyone else, was shocked last week to hear of Michael Jackson’s sudden and untimely death. Immediately, many memories started to come to mind like dancing to Off the Wall at my earliest junior high dances and teaching Jazz (dance) classes to every cut on the Thriller album. But the piercing moment that my heart broke a little and I entered the fellowship of the mourning masses was when I saw one of the videos of an eleven years young Michael Jackson singing and dancing with his brothers in the Jackson Five.

That beautiful little boy inspired the most momentous crush that I have ever had. Somewhere in early elementary school I got the ABC album and it changed my heart forever. From that album, I definitively learned the power of rhythm and blues, the power of charm and charisma and the power of LOVE! My love for Michael Jackson! My room was plastered with posters of Michael. My record player often played that record. I was completely hooked on that beautiful singing and dancing little boy. My dear friend Margaret Ann and I were part of thousands of little girls who screamed through an entire concert of the Jackson Five in Richmond, VA. In my little girl fantasy life, I planned to marry Michael Jackson and have two children named Michael, Jr. and Michaelena.

Oh, but I should have taken the wisdom of one of their songs: “Stop! The love you save may be your own.” How could my little girl self know how my path would diverge from the object of my deepest crush? A few years later, the beautiful brown boy with the afro grew up and started losing touch with his beauty. Michael Jackson’s music has always been fabulous, but I could not deal with what I perceived as his inability or unwillingness to love himself. By the time I got to those junior high dances, I was no longer in love. I was jammin’ to the music, but I left the posters and Michael and Michaelena with other childish things.

Some years ago, I heard poet Alice Walker read a poem called “Natural Star,” which she had written to Michael Jackson—the beautiful boy Michael that I had loved. Watching the news last week, Walker’s poem came to mind. Having arrived at Michael’s physical death makes Walker seem clairvoyant now.

NATURAL STAR

I am in mourning
for your face
The one I used to love
to see
Leaping, glowing
upon the stage
The mike
Eager...
Thrusting
In your fist.

I am in mourning
for your face
the shining eyes
the happy teeth
the look that said
I am the world
and aren’t you
glad
Not to mention
deeply
in luck.

I am in mourning
for the sweet brown innocence
of your skin
your perfect nose
the shy smile
that lit you
like a light.

I am in mourning
for a face
the Universe
in its goodness
makes but once
each
thousand
years
and smiles
and sends it out
to spread great joy
Itself well pleased.

I am in mourning
for your beloved face
so thoroughly and
undeservedly released.

Oh, my pretty little
Brother. Genius. Child.
Sing to us. Dance.

Rest in peace.

“Natural Star” in Alice Walker, Her Blue Body Everything We Know:  Earthling Poems 1965-1990 Complete, (New York:  Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1991), 422-23.