Remembrance and Commemoration

Whitey and Mistah Bones

Black folk near not anywhere near 'round

my middle class brick white

du-plex house in the 1950's early suburb

where nothing was rarely, as in never,

mentioned not in words anyway of a colored world

'cept mebe 'bout Indians. The drumming kind.

And certainly never about the massacre. Certainly.

Never.

“Donh go north of Boulevard” she said more than once

without explanation, even with Mrs. Johnson

who lived over there within eyeshot with her carpenter

husband, six kids, and mother-in-law, folding our underwear.

The first black person I really met I was already in college

invited to a “sit-in” sitting in.

I didn't go. Had an exam that afternoon

on theories of conflict resolution.

I didn't learn about the massacre

until twenty years later from a black student

in a speech class I was teaching.

5.31.2020 jb

Blackbird

Blackbird dead in the

dead of night, you took

your broken wings

guided by sunken eyes,

and learned to fly again.

Into the light of a dark black night

you flew singing with the dead

in the dead of night, waiting.

You've been waiting for the moment

to rise and meet those wings

spread over your soaring songs.

Know: The night is fading

with the rising of a new sun

You've been waiting

all your life.

No one saw your freedom.

There's no need for them to see it.

The sun is up,

Sing Blackbird.

Blackbird, fly.

5.31.2021 jb