Postscript from Mississippi
When you asked if it rained bees or poison
you were asking the wrong question. Again.
You still didn’t understand the difference
between hurricanes and flooding. Thus between
gods and humans. Between your slum-
lordy digs and the shacks I pass that cling
to old boards and huddle around each family.
The yards marking the care of home.
Everywhere something is falling on
someone and I watch like an autumn
tourist tripping through the Berkshires.
I reach to catch a leaf. I try to straighten
a Pisa-like sapling. The wind wraps around
us both like a question mark and leaves
me standing, the sole witness on this end.
I’m telling you about a place of silence.
You want it all to be a metaphor. I’m watching
a front porch crumble. Still, someone sits there.
Rebecca Morgan Frank, "Postscript from Mississippi" from Sometimes We’re All Living in a Foreign Country. Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Morgan Frank. Reprinted by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press.
