"Will's Flowers" – another poem for spring

Will’s Flowers
For David

I never yearned for snow
though brand new clothes from fat
Sears-Roebuck catalogues
committed to the U. S. post
by Uncle Lannie’s faithful hand
in Cincinnati’s never never land –
those made me glad enough.
He stayed away for years
writing Aunt V long letters
casting box after box onto
the dead slow sea-mail waters
hoarding expiring pennies
for a car a house storing
for ever after the best time
of his life. Adult and old
I never thought, “Is how
him manage foreign? Not
a wife. No family, no kin.”
And so of course I follow him…

Now when spring reach T.O.
and the wild blonde from up
the street that tend to endless
cats and her small garden
with fierce care come forth
with spade in hand to set
again this year pot upon
pot of yellow daffodils
I think how we ex-slaves
enfranchised manumitted
free of snow white queens
Britannic motherland
I think we still don’t
understand the bard’s
peregrinations and sake
of that we dis poor Will
mightily do him wrong.

Niggers still coming North
lured by the siren song
of work and decent pay
the chance to quarry out
a little life. Meanwhile
as dog nyam dog cold
carving up your carcass
vampire cops hunt you
for your dark blood this skip
of light this skemps of flower
that God promote from grass
rooted in blackness bent
on breaching ice just
pushing pushing up to
celebrate sun summer
unrepentant livity…

To rass! What a misguided fuss.
The blasted daffodils is just like us.

from Certifiable (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions) 2001.