Rita Dove

Oh, obstreperous one, ornery outside of ordinary
protocols; paramilitary probie par 

excellence: Every evidence
you yield yells. 

They say leap-year babies
are out-of-time, moony. I’m really
just two, closer to the womb

The notion that the carriage wheels clattering through Paris
remind him of the drums from the islands in his father’s tales:
clickclack sputterwhir—he could make a song of it, dance

All men are beggars, white or black;
some worship gold, some peddle brass.
My only house is on my back.

Can’t say he walked the walk.
Talked it, but everybody
did that, everybody

Summer ended powerfully—as if God
had snapped a branch from his mightiest oak
and thundered: “Enough.” The sky dimmed.

In search of pasture, a place to lie down in.
Back to the mother breast
or a dream of return

Which face to choose?
Start in the left-hand corner—and speak to it
      as if to a flock of birds

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