Rita Dove

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

excellence: Every evidence
you yield yells. 

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

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.

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