Missing In America
Dark-skinned men huddle together
Shoulder to shoulder,
Small smoke signals intermittently
Tapping holes in thin air,
Their blue-black shadows lifting
high over the stretch of valley
ridgeline compromised by thick-necked slavers &
the sanctity of God hanging like dew drops
ready to seize innocence in a shower of whitewash.
The squawk of black crows announced what they all knew
Deep in their holey brogans,
that the sun would slant westward over the mountains
and the sixteenth crucified savior
would assume his rightful place over the dominion
of fools and the land would cease being land,
but a burial pyre, the ashes of Nat Turner smoldering the cold morning air.
He was right! A Black man’s hand did reach over the sun,
And them people would be who they always had been,
Flayers of their Father’s skin,
Dancers by the midnight torch,
Howling at the moon.
