Ray Charles Robinson JR. - You Dont Know Me: Reflections of My Father, Ray Charles

I Searched for You

Dad, Im searching for you and now you are gone

You and I were like two ships sailing in the

Night. Just missing each other, each searching

For the light in the other. Seeking each other for love, seeking each other for strength.

Wishing you were here to bump into, to feel your hands cup my face, running your hands over my shoulders to my waist, to the top of my head, and to you I have grown all over again.

Wishing I could kiss your forehead and tell you not to worry, I crossed my own boundaries, my trials were necessary.

Though the rain shall come again, I promise to follow the sun. When I see you again in the light of God, His will shall be done and you shall smile to see I have found my way to the light.

In the light there shall be no more past, no disappointment or reliving the pain, only love.

You shall see me for the first time as I shall you. We shall walk and talk together about all we can look forward to in life eternal.

Dad, please tell Grandmother Aretha, Grandfather Bailey, Granddaddy, Uncle George, Mary Jane, Grams, Aunt Sadie, Mama Lee, Elaine Bailey, and Elaine Chenier hello. Also say hello to Hank, Fathead, and Leroy. Please let them know they are missed, too.

Dad, do not forget to touch me in my dreams, so I can continue to follow lifes beautiful schemes.

Until we see each other again, you can rest now.

I love you, Dad.

Inside the Music

Dad, inside the music was where you belong,

Your first love, your beginning, and your ending.

Your music was the experience and your dreams

At work. It was all of the words and your feelings

You could not express.

Inside the music was your private world, your gift, and your journey.

Its where the requiem of your thoughts and

Dreams could be heard

All in real time to be deferred.

Inside the music was our common ground,

It was our sanctuary to search our thoughts,

Souls, and dreams to abound in

Those beautiful life schemes.

Inside the music was life in all its splendor

With all of its sunshine and rain. Yet we survived to remain, no one to blame. With all of the love meant, Dad, life with you was still as beautiful as the dream.

It is here in the midst where they shall find you and me, inside the music.

Its a New Day

I have witnessed the injustice and civil unrest during the 60s in America,

And I watched the assassination of an American president.

I remember the disappointment and the fear of the Watts riots, Burn Baby Burn,

And I remember feeling the hopelessness the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

I watched a man walk in space,

And I remember how the balance of scale tipped with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for our race.

I remember voting for change in 2008, Americas status quo was rearranged

And the result was our first African American president, Barack Obama, the forty-fourth president of the United States of America.

With great strides taken in the twenty-first century, God bless our president and God bless America.

My father would have been surprised, oh say can you see, its a new day for you and me.