From Which I Flew

Only together holding their hands in silence can I see what a field has done

to my mother, aunts and uncles.

The land around my grandmother's

old tin roof has changed,

I doubt she'd recognized it from above.

How many blackbirds does it take

to lift a house? I'll bring my living,

you wake your dead.

We have nowhere to go, but we're leaving anyhow,

by many ways. When they ask  why

you want to fly, Blackbird? Say

I want to leave the south

because it killed the first man I loved

and so much more killing.

Say my son's name,

his death was the first thing to break me in

and fly me through town.

If grief has a body it wears his Dodgers cap

and still walks to the corner store to buy lottery tickets

and Budweiser 40s.

I don't like what I have to be here to be.

All the blackbirds with nowhere to go

keep leaving.