Unquiet Walk
Our maimed willow leans west,
half gone — great limbs sheared
by wind and age, bark peeled
open at its base. An American,
I don’t read the history of trees,
and even a willow’s span baffles.
Think how we burned Tulsa–
sixty square blocks — and killed
three hundred. Forgotten now,
pretty much — but wounds left
no doubt with Black families stuck
for weeks in a Red Cross camp.
Each spring our yard floods.
A creek drained these fields once,
before roads made water pool
where our half-tree hosts a pair
of hawks. Each fall we drag
a heap of soggy leaves to the street.
Tonight, according to the Times,
children camp in the desert —
one thousand six hundred —
moved at night, to be held
for months, perhaps, or more.
Some night next June, when
I walk to the neighborhood park,
a hint of green, some trees,
a patch of dirt and a backstop,
with teens smoking on a playscape
and men and women of all shades
and shapes circling the bases
under the lights, a child
in Texas will turn on her cot
and stare into a blank canvas wall.