Posts for June 27, 2020 (page 9)

That night we prayed in Triangle Park
cupping vigil candles with paper wax catchers
from a baby wind with our hands
there is something unifying about
lighting a candle from another
something so on the nose metaphorical

I pick gravel out of my knee from earlier
when our cheeks were on the intersection
flat on our stomachs
hands behind backs
and their lights were flashing so
red blue patriotic freedom I could see with
my eyes closed

We are vulnerable
level with the lip of an officer’s shoe
but never as vulnerable as a Black man alone
with one cop doing three cops watching
for eight minutes forty-six seconds without a choice we are reeling

A prayer that is mostly megaphone static
I don’t know what we are agreeing to
but if god is really omniscient
he’ll thread this noise into meaning

Hit from behind while parked 
My neck craned to see what!

Sliding out the driver’s side,
A voice shouted “He hit you from the side.”

Slowly an elderly masked man slithered over
“No damage. I’m picking up my lunch.”

Without the stranger’s intervention 
I would be at a loss what happened.

Old man was not eager to own up.
No damage he said.
Accountability and trust don’t count.

Only a scrape on the tire rim
but fear for decency out there
concerns me.

God must have wept the day He cracked
the clay to reveal your voice, little bird.
… and God must have sadly spoken you,
for your brown eyes would someday fall.

I can see blue mountains, I can see the sky.
I see you, sparrow, rising, then falling to 
my cry.
I see my cloud, arresting on the hollow, and
the coal fire smoking, circling high.
It is a far better world, knowing songs like 
yours abide—

—and she spied His little eye.