Southern Politics
We moved to Winston-Salem even though
we quit smoking over thirty years ago
it turns out RJR’s no longer top banana
now the Baptists keep the bearded
Jesus highly competitive
and the economy based more
on doughnuts than naughty tobacco plants
made southern cities glow a distinct culture
ya’ll god may frown on tobacco sugar
so the city fathers plan branching out
to the computer Dell’s church rising up
no doubt will aspire to a heaven here
in Winston life filled with prosperity
with demon speed of communication
hardly seems a renunciation’s in order
crape myrtles line the street and even if
my neighbors are not all Republicans
allowed a war necessary to stop
Saddam and that new wave of imports
the undocumented working Mexicans.
West 74 to Wytheville
One ridge rides another ridge
one guitar solo rides another
guitar solo riding both
raises a poignant question
of immense proportion
unsettled a sign painted
along the road pointed
to the Baptist church
what if god is salvation
sawed bones unaccounted
a bone one had better
not be taking for granted
one winter rides
another winter one
father rides another father
one forged check rides
another forged check
day begins essentially
some question some looking
for any answer to this power
we start to pay attention
to things that happen
things that might happen
one thought may ride another
thought one horse may ride
another horse one moment cross
another moment this morning
Wytheville is much farther than
I intend to go or any singing
Lament
The race against time is like the moon.
It comes and goes, pulls us in its tide,
illuminates us if we are too soon,
too late, a bloom out of season, a sad bride.
Whether we push on at all, a question
fathers bring to such mortality, our children,
years of holding up the world upon our shoulders,
till we may sleep free of dark, exiled fears.
And still we run and run and run.
And all the black holes we have faced head on,
and all the hard and hardened laughing we have done,
return to us our days, our nights, a dancing over oceans.
