Poems
 
Old Man River
 
 
If I were to come
across the Atlantic
riding a blue wild fish.
Or if, stroke after stroke,
against green wave and high tide,
I swam upon your banks:
Would you take me upstream?
Would you unfold your arms
and hold me,
dark skin against dark skin?

We would contend in lost battle
with silent water currents
and treacherous rapids,
and, were we to lose it,
we would not regret it,
for at the end what matters
is to have fought side by side.

You would sheet me in your waters,
along with swarming
scaly little creatures,
who will sing for us
as dawn breaks,
and we disentangle our bodies
from sweet night battlegrounds.

Would you, old man,
take me below your hundred bridges,
pass your colorful barges,
your rolling steamboats?
Would you wake me up early
to listen to buried songs
sung long ago
in ruined cottonfields?

I would keep pace with you
as you run
under the wailing towers
where your children wait
for what men named
capital punishment,
but is truly
the reverse of city center,
the lowest case of all lower-cases,
the denial of capitol,
the uncapital.

We would dive under your bedrock
in search of drowned Mississipian lands,
and then, exhausted,
I would nest on the curls
of your soft mossy beard.
and when our time ends
and I'll be on my way
you would wave me farewell
with your silky brown handkerchief.

Nashville, 1996

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