Exodus
If I sense revolving a moving
away I’ll think of sourwood leaves
swaying before the drop.
Before the rake through streaked
grass before I yank
what has already left air in my palm.
A palm where nothing lives.
You have given me pulse
reason to remain.
But I’m now tattered sliced
assaulted.
The gulls cry as if they miss
water yet it’s near.
What if you’re the water I miss?
* * * * *
Rubies
after Kawon Walker
What was it like before the floor?
Before that glacial end before
they found you without
life were they the takers?
They followed a trail of rubies.
From somewhere on you
they spilled. Young dead black
on the jail floor. You were
alone. Who sees you
alone? Who gathers for you?
Crystals in your hands. We discuss
you without in this room
of tealight candles warm
plates on the table. Someone
is loud here. The same one
always loud always
heard that demand over over.
But you soundless.
So many soundless.
No one sings for you.
* * * * *
We Were Supposed to Share
I didn’t indicate partition. That one takes hides
a portion of the other’s life. But that all is shared.
How we walk here see here.
Everything open to us.
Discussed over grilled
vegetables something that swam.
We once swam in a sea
that wrangled me here.
Here where laws are meant to dismember.
Afraid of it.
Afraid of them.
I told you then there in the salt.
You turn away from me.
Claim your unshared life.
Call it plans without description
as a herd of Arabians gallop off a crag.
The sod of their hooves in chucks
as they snap over shale turn the sea criminal.
I retaliate with the same word
as strawberries ripen in fields.
With stained hands I give these to you.
* * * * *
Slowness
Your pace slows near the jasmine.
Some of the white blossoms scatter
about the cobbled street like paper political
slogans crushed. Yesterday
we ran from killers who turned
their guns on themselves.
I’m thinking of the man I could
have become the killer of me
in cells red maple boughs watching.
Are you thinking of this? Is this
the source of your sudden
slowness near that white-wooden
house the white blossoms
still on the vine?