It is downright unfair to pick a couple of poems from a prolific poet to represent them. In each of my entries during my observation of Poetry Month, I pick one or two poems (or a few more in the case of Langston Hughes). I cannot find my tattered paperback copies of two volumes by the late poet Lucille Clifton. I read them so much they are held together with elastic and I know I put them somewhere for safe-keeping and that included safe from me.
I was able to find two of her poems on line that I especially like, “listen children” with its celebratory poem and “the loss baby poem” a prayer, promise and admonition.
listen children by Lucille Clifton 
listen children
keep this in the place
you have for keeping
always
keep it all ways
we have never hated black
listen
we have been ashamed
hopeless tired mad
but always
all ways
we loved us
we have always loved each other
children all ways
pass it on
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The lost baby poem
by Lucille Clifton
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned
you would have been born in winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car
we would have made the thin walk
over the genecy hill into the canada winds
to let you slip into a stranger’s hands
if you were here i could tell you
these and some other things
and if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers wash over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller of seas
let black men call me stranger always
for your never named sake
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Related:
Remembering Lucille Clifton by Elizabeth Alexander
Grolier Poetry Book Shop founded in 1927 and owned by poet and Wellesley College Professor, Ifeanyi Menkiti.