Coming Home from Martin's Ferry

for the memory of poetry and of James Wright

There is a segregation in the need to understand as there is

in many other things...

That which comes in its correct time dies in its correct time but

we still cannot help holding on. The confederate flags bloomed as we
drove from Pennsylvania and crossed into West Virginia then ricocheted
back into Ohio.

Old blood and torture still smells the same.

And, if we follow a poet's history home we see shells of his old

Homes, of people who hurt him and now say they were his friends

We find confederate flags yet soft evenings, spectacular in no way

at all and soft hypocrisies.

But, what we look for is that breaking open of the human soul that

Knows not Black or White in the field of humanity...

That moment of the mare, that does not belong to us coming to us out of
love, hunger, compassion? The grace of its spiritual mouth is our
painted Rick's white home with ethnic hate the white exterior a
quivering palm.

Come to me this way, existence. Because, I have wasted time on the
whole contemplating love and waiting for people on the whole to be
more humane, when human kindness is on an individual, selective level.

Black ants sorrow near your plaque.

And, the stray black cat in an alleyway takes merciful pieces of fish
from the cook at the Veteran's Legion Hall, when the Saturday fish fry
is completed. Yes, I have wasted time. Passionately. Full throttle.
Hopeful someone knew you deeper than their tall tales.

The green grass of ligatures made beautiful tinged in the Southern
sunlight.

They said you wandered for a while with little money, only their mercy
securing you. Then, you somehow found yourself again.

James, there are poems in place waiting for your return.

There always perhaps will be.