Reparations
       

Maybe not for the dead exactly,
more their silenced echoes. How air
skates each prayer over a raw body
of earth without penetrating. For all
those migrant hands sunk between
nations. A palmful of plums, apples;
a lungful of coal. How our short-
lived bodies act as insurrections;
sometimes, consolations. For dying
unions; the hesitant oaths mothers
make to their uniformed sons from
docks that end in bright white ships.
For how frantically they wave; how
full their emptying arms. This is for
that fullness. For the gods it took to
get us this far and the gods we'd kill
or invent for just one more breath.
I have failed you again; and this is
for that failing. For the wailing we
think should shake the earth, that
changes nothing. I was wrong; this
has always been for the dead. And I
have risked so little to linger here.

Tweet

Copyright © 2020 John Sibley Williams All rights reserved
from As One Fire Consumes Another
Orison Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission