homepoem

homepoem
for new orleans
 
More than love, these ways you wove me
A hem, a web, a gilt brocade burnished
by clamoring years, by worn generations,
Your soul the frayed cadence of all our torn voices
Our gnarled marchfeet dying, rising by millions
Your bones the parched silt, the long-drowning ground
More than love, this rough salvation
Your eyes our tumbling flames
Our crinkling processions of days
The maps of all our exile, withered
deep in the gulleys of your dark skin.
 
The back of your neck: still soft in sleep
Your black knees rise from waters, thick,
Dance the shimmered songs of all our ages
The bright dresses, the cracked sidewalks
We are somehow still alive
More than youth, this resurrection
We are, somehow, still alive
 
I want no other than a future in your knottled hands.
Away, my soul has leapt, grown wings--
Still I’ll crawl to you any day
Down shards of roads, on dusting nails,
Past nameless windswept hollowed cities,
stooping oilrigs, crackled forests,
decayed motelrooms, long-gone swamps,
this tiring bleeding callused journey
the vast impractical looming miles; oh
Still I’d crawl to you any day
If I could only have one night
inside your imperfect, grainy arms