I am a black woman
the music of my song
some sweet arpeggio of tears
is written in a minor key
and I
can be heard humming in the night
Can be heard
humming
in the night

I saw my mate leap screaming to the sea
and I/with these hands/cupped the lifebreath
from my issue in the canebrake
I lost Nat’s swinging body in a rain of tears
and heard my son scream all the way from Anzio
for Peace he never knew….I
learned Da Nang and Pork Chop Hill
in anguish
Now my nostrils know the gas
and these trigger tire/d fingers
seek the softness in my warrior’s beard

I am a black woman
tall as a cypress
strong
beyond all definition still
defying place
and time
and circumstance
assailed
impervious
indestructible
Look
on me and be
renewed

I
See the ancient underbrush
the disciplined entanglement
wild welt of trees and gullies
traps of mud and broken branch
the hairline brook, the secret water
see the stirring, see him coming
modulating thru the silence
leaping sinkholes, torn confusion
buckling knees then grace regained
he ducks and dodges
		Black man running
    claiming Freedom
thru the ageless sun and shadow
vanishes from sight he is at once both
Past and Present, history repeated
	history relearned

II
History relived
the Present savagely contrived, the
Past still swollen, still unhealed and 
	All transition merely language.
What was tar, and rope, and flame was 
	rape and scrounge
		is magnum now,
    is unrelenting chokehole

	   Sanctioned lynchings
		Still orgasmic

III
The time is surely near
when we reluctantly have learned 
what lessons time intends to teach
And such intransigence as now
is veiled and hid we will release
When “for their thousand blows” return
	a thousand ten
However unannounced, the Truth is clear:
Until we stand, until we act
the murders, the oppression still
	    the unabated war
	we seem unable to define
		goes on

Black man running
thru the ageless sun and shadow
    Vulnerable
	still unavenged
History repeated past all logic
Who is it bides the time and why?
	And for how long?
There will be no one left, for ovens