New Verse News, the current affairs poetry website, has picked up my poem, "A Texan Reflects on an Old Cemetery." Check out the site here.
A TEXAN REFLECTS
ON AN OLD CEMETERY
It's hard work running a lake,
commodifying water. Thousands of facts
sit in filing cabinets and hard-drives --
pumping costs, acre-foot allocations.
Dealing with them every day
you get into a routine of thinking
and hold your mouth a certain way,
and then seven years of drought
undoes it all. A forgotten cemetery
emerges along the shoreline,
water falling away like a gray blanket,
uncovering wooden coffins, bones
of former slaves, mostly children.
It’s as if they woke and rubbed
sand out of their eyes like sleep
and came down to the courthouse
to testify about a terrible crime,
and then, being children, tumbled out
among bird song and dry grass
to play a while in the free air.
No comments:
Post a Comment