Roots

I.

At the humid southern diner:

“You want some hash browns or grits or biscuits

with yo‘ eegs?“

asked the beautiful voluptuous woman

with the cherry chocolate skin and

round olive eyes

 

II.

They got roots, deep deep roots

grabbing ahold of the moist fertile soil,

a town by the water, a town with

a history, three-hundred years written,

a town with family found in neighbors,

and shop owners who say, “good‘mornin‘”

to the visitors, to the foreigners,

while sweeping their store front,

there are no strangers here

 

 

III.      

And the storm waters erased it all:

floating photographs of swirls of color,

a dresser, a bible, a pillow

encased in grandma‘s cotton,

a memory, the pearl-white wedding china,

a mistake, a glazed gold wedding band,

floating, floating, drowning, falling, decaying

crumbling, tearing, screaming–

a cat, thirteen years old,

pumping its paws in the salty liquid filth,

a 75-year old man, white hair and chocolate skin,

a cane floating out the door, no car, no money, no

escape—

a gun, two guns, soldiers in army fatigues,

the poor are refuges, not citizens,

they pillage because they are starving,

they wail and punch because they are hopeless,

30,000 crammed inside a dome,

sleeping bags, torn wet blankets, misery misery

violence and rape in the crowded bathrooms,

there is no safety here where humanity has been

stripped away, it drowned back in the house

with the pets, with the history, with the normalcy 

 

 

IV.

“All right hun, here‘s yo‘ coffee and eegs,“

her whole being curved into a smile

and she meandered back to the kitchen,

laughing and swaying her arms—

the storm obliterated her home, she never

got to say goodbye to her neighbors—

the little girl with the pink barrettes, her young mother,

the aging couple who would sit on the porch fanning themselves with love—

she prayed every day for them,

she thanked God for her brown-pin-stripped uniform,

for the air in her lungs,

and for the will to keep her chin above the rising water of

     poverty racism failed government gentrification

the storm took away the houses, the infrastructure, the culture,

it stole the lives of children, of elderly—

but underneath the wreckage and decay,

underneath the ominous spray-painted

circle-slash on building walls,

lived the ancient trees of its people,

the spirit of generations of new-orleaners, grounded,

rooted deep into the earth,

in wisdom and faith,

in openness, open open openness,

with love and prayers

and music and song—

this little light of mine,

I‘m gonna let it shine,

This little light of mine,

I‘m gonna let it shine,

This little light of mine,

I‘m gonna let it shine,

Let it shine let it shine let it shine