I come from the crack that the white ball makes
When it scatters the colored balls
Over the green felt looking
For a pocket down
At Lee’s Game Room.
Those same colored balls
Now scattered by city streets
Become the neighborhoods
Where we all live.
I have heard the pent up desires
Of the men who played those games;
I have watched their money
That wasn’t supposed to be there,
And their dreams that always were
Change hands.
In my town Hope is an uphill climb
On a dead end street that ends
At a Jewish cemetery
Abandoned.
The Jews have all scattered
In another diaspora
But they left their names
Like Moayon and Bradshaw,
Hayes and Howell.
I visit our version of Easy Street
A stubby little street four houses long
But no one knows where it lies
Or how to get there
But the mailman
And the property tax assessor.
Hope that dead ends
And Easy Street a stub end
And all the many streets and lanes,
Courts and avenues,
That take us all to work and home,
To food and fun,
To here and there;
They all are where I’m from.
I come from the churches that spire the town,
The black churches, the white churches
Who worship the same God
With the same sincerity
And the same hymns
By the same choir of voices.
I have heard the same prayers whispered
From all those mouths
In the chapels of earnestness
With faith that someone will hear.
I come from the same winter houses
That smell strong of Kerosene
Breathed in by the young and old,
By dog and cat,
By sick and well.
And the sirens that come to the houses of those
Whose heaters ran dry or whose clothes caught fire
Hoping to stay warm.
I come from those places and many more
Including this one special place where
As I cross the bridge over the Little River
I look down to see some large fish
Holding steady in the current
As the river flows away;
I come from that emblematic fish
Steady in the current
Seeking always to drag it away.
I hold myself in this place like the fish
Because where I’m from is who I am.
