What Her Dead See

There is a little lower layer. Where worms thrive.
Look down, but don’t go.
The black man is not black, you just can’t see
his bones without you curtain his white face.
Hear the woods talk. There ain't no lies out here.
I’m going to lie down now and sleep a spell.

Floyce keeps forgetting to read what she wrote.
He’s reached the place now he walks with a cane.
Comes to be here so she can tell him how.
He cups an ear to the earth and listens.
She’s still sleeping. After such a long life.
The dirt between his fingers filters through.

I’m sitting here letting nothing become
no one sitting here, and least of all me.
You can see for yourself. Ask the doctor
signing my birth certificate. He’s here
seven years later, with a pen with ink.
She lives way out, in the wilder country.

She sees them seeing what she never saw.
Men in blue uniforms riding horses
that never have a chance. Box canyons
abound. Up on the mountain no one sees.
Do anything in God’s name. He approves
decimation and rout of the heathen.

Trouble is, Drusilla, you must be dead.
But it’s the past, so you can live again.
You’re not even born. Wait a hundred years.
But no need here. You can walk the same trail
in your granddaddy’s baby skin. Step out.

(3 October 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander