Archive
06/15/09 - (3)
Beyond North Baringo
Living in a project's tenement, in the sweaty crotch of this rotten city, In a dump with no A/C and stuck-shut windows, I, more than many, if not most, Enjoy just sitting outdoors, way past twilight, midnight, During the stale, stalled, breezeless months of late summer.
What freedom, luxury, luck, Knowing that when I've had enough, grown tired, I have some place to go home to, So I don't have to call it a night on the pigeon-shitted sidewalk, A bedroom to sleep in, instead of a cardboard box.
I can still recall all those summers I spent with my grandma, Down in West Helena, Arkansas, on North Baringo, When my cousins and me would play with her chickens and guinea hens, While she and her people, her neighbors, sat on their porches, Laughing away their blues, training poverty's black dogs to heel.
That's why, to this day, three hundred fifty miles north, Every chance I get, I take to what there is of the grass out front, Plant myself, cross-legged, and let life pass me by. It puts me in mind of those North Baringo porches And the good fortune that, somehow, found me, out of the crowd.
06/15/09 - (3)
|
|||
|
|||
