A Note, From the Cotton Fields of Texas to the Land of the Free

I see ebony on ivory.

I see midnight on daylight.

I see sweet black hands plucking stark white fiber, in my fields aglow.

I see bright red blood tinging sable and snow, from the pricked dark hands walking row after row

I see lives being leaked, brothers being lynched, in my fields aglow.

I see babies on backs.

I see shanties and shacks.

I see humans being scorched in the hot southern sun, in my fields aglow.

I see blacks in the way-back eating separate and apart, in the restaurants, at fountains, and all the city parks

I see the pale complying, while the dark are dying, in my fields aglow.

Out on the outskirts of larger Texas cities, we cotton fields lay in the nooks and crannies.

All flat and smoldering and dotted with white, I see black brothers and sisters living in strife.

Yeah, I see it in my mind’s eye of what it was like then, and I pear out over the landscape here now to lean in

The laws may look different and the blatancy has waned, but that just means active atrocities go unnamed.

The cotton fields then, all over the land now.

The privileged have stood on the shoulders of the enslaved.

Whites are ahead because of a centuries-old gain.

I see them THEN in my fields aglow, bent over, chained, their pain calling out quittance.

I see them NOW, in the neighborhoods and cities, lying on the ground, their breath begging for deliverance.

It’s past and it’s current.

It’s old and it’s new.

It’s deep and elastic.

What shall we do?

You start with you.

I’ll start with me,

Land of the Free.