~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Back from Wars

Back from wars,
younger men than myself
stare past through classroom
learning and lore. I pretend
to teach them new patterns
through language, give them letters
for organization, focus, development
and style in written Units.

One morning a student arrives
with new orders. I see “D” for “Disability,”
“L” for “Loss of memory,” “T” for “Terrors,”
“F” for “Fatigue.” For a moment my authority
falls away and I wonder about experience
forced through language and
if bombs can be symbolized by words.
I look up, expecting a bang. Instead
I see a classroom of students—talking
on cellphones, deploying computer keys,
but one man stands ready and willing,
letters of summed experience between us.

Rivers Speak Back

The rivers know you too, Langston:
know you through the blood that speaks your traditions:
words on pages. Rhythms and a prophet’s voice.

Your influence grows wide, washing
over writers and their ideas.

You bathed the minds of ceaseless wanderers
in thought,
created music to sing out words
for Generations,
traveled our country’s waters when struggles raged most perverse.
Your language drifts up the Mississippi, from 1920s New Orleans,
past a Memphis motel in ’68,
to Chicago’s Grant Park November 4, 2008.

We know you Langston:
writer of the people, for the people.

Our depths flow fluid with your words.