Poetry

The first horn lifts its arm over the dew-lit grass
and in the slave quarters there is a rustling—
children are bundled into aprons, cornbread

Waking one morning
we cannot find
Kate or Wesley,
or his cows and sheep,

It thrashes in the oaks and soughs in the elms.
Catches on innocence and soon dismantles that.
Sends children bewildered into life. Childhood

It’s a sunny weekday in May
and I have had a bowl of beef stew
and a cold bottle of beer on the brick patio

  For all the years he worked as a pattern cutter
in the denim sweatshops of Los Angeles,
  my father never spoke of what it was he did.