at evening

western

could I be

a sundown man

enfold you

unfold you

the colored rays

of our shining

the western sky

at evening?

~ ralph murre

as Mardi Gras approaches

Delta Blues

There, on the edge of the shelf,

in the sad and beautiful frames of generations,

the black and white portraits of us,

the sepia of our flesh,

the glisten and the dance.

There, the mouth of Old Man River

speaks to the sea of a continent stolen,

but Mother Ocean says, “Africa –

I’m here for her children. Europa –

I’m here for her children.  And Asia’s,”

she says.  There,

where those two meet day in and out,

night after night, in throes

of love and fight and blows

of gods of wind, there

in a mixed-blood flood,

she takes away a few of those

she’s brought on her broad back,

but carries them now in her womb

from that Crescent City where the water

rises above the tombs.

“Shall we gather . . .”, sings the old man,

“On that beautiful shore . . .”, says the sea.

~ Ralph Murre