This is where they removed
their shoes, baptized their feet
in the river’s muddy promise,
swam (if they could swim),
drowned or grounded themselves
in Indiana, freedom either way. 

Their descendants dance at this place
by the river, Ghanaian drums restoring
ancestral heartbeats that rise (and sigh)
amid the highway din.

Threads of names have lain in concrete
footprints here, their syllables torn and shorn
until they’re known as the “unknown,”
faceless yet recalled to the last, a gift
from the present to the past