Our State

OUR STATE

(in memory of Virgia Brocks-Shedd, 1943-1992 )

In our youth, invisible empires

secretly granted us a wisdom of silence,

energy of tears to baptize spaces for our lives.

We navigated rainbows of dust,

linked by the crystals of fate

and discontinuous sparkling of joy.

Good morning, heartache, you always come again,

good evening, mindscape, our faith-bound friend,

good night, necessity, good night.

Yes, the fierce silence of prayer

guided our quest for sanctuary,

for a peace we bravely misunderstood.

Mississippi made us

photographs of ourselves

to accuse love and hate and chaos.

Water, our first memory,

the mother/father sea

that tempest for  tasting the salted fruits of trees.

Metaphysics of time

leaned us and learned us

to be tall pines in buckshot mud and sun-baked clay.

Bogus vocabularies crammed our mouths

as we shot the marbles  and jumped the ropes

of the troubles and hopes the folk saw fit to see.

Our photographs darkened

as our music drizzled Delta blues in our ears

and promises of jazz in our eyes.

Good morning, heartache, you always come again,

good evening, mindscape, our faith-bound friend,

good night, necessity, good night.

Owls in our brains

itemized the humanity of our rites,

voiced the sovereignty  of our questions.

Secure in being native daughter and native son

we trod our Mississippi roads, brave,  defiant, as now

when  I speak the sugar of your smile and inhale the incense of your genius.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.