Today’s cozy reading features Langston Hughes’s beloved poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers, illustrated with luminous watercolor depth by E. B. Lewis. The poem traces a lineage of rivers — the Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile, the Mississippi — each carrying history, memory, and the long human story of endurance and beauty.

I shaped the reading around a soft “Rivers of Memory” arc: how water holds time; how history flows through generations; how a single line of poetry can open into a whole landscape of feeling.

Before recording, I created a small index‑card collage — a textured river scene framed in my handmade red‑with‑white‑dots frame. This creative ritual helps me enter Hughes’s world with warmth, attention, and affection.

🎥 Watch the full cozy poetry reading and enjoy this gentle, river‑bright moment.