The rain falling on a night
in mid-December,
I pull to my father’s engine
wondering how long I’ll remember
this. His car is dead. He connects
jumper cables to his battery,
then to mine without looking in
at me & the child. Water beads
on the windshields, the road sign,
his thin blue coat. I’d get out now,
prove I can stand with him
in the cold, but he told me to stay
with the infant. I wrap her
in the blanket staring
for what seems like a long time
into her open, toothless mouth,
and wish she was mine. I feed her
an orange softened first in my mouth,
chewed gently until the juice runs
down my fingers as I squeeze it
into hers. What could any of this matter
to another man passing on his way
to his family, his radio deafening
the sound of water & breathing
along all the roads bound to his?
But to rescue a soul is as close
as anyone comes to God.
Think of Noah lifting a small black bird
from its nest. Think of Joseph
raising a son that wasn’t his.

Let me begin again.
I want to be holy. In rain

I pull to my father’s car
with my girlfriend’s infant.
She was pregnant when we met.
But we’d make love. We’d make
love below stars & shingles
while the baby kicked between us.
Perhaps a man whose young child
bears his face, whose wife waits
as he drives home through rain
& darkness, perhaps that man
would call me a fool. So what.
There is one thing I will remember
all my life. It is as small
& holy as the mouth
of an infant. It is speechless.
When his car would not stir,
my father climbed in beside us,
took the orange from my hand,
took the baby in his arms.
In 1974, this man met my mother
for the first time as I cried or slept
in the same city that holds us
tonight. If you ever tell my story,
say that’s the year I was born.
for James L. Hayes

NOTES

NOTES

“LORDE” The poem is made up of whole and partial lines in the index (under W) of The Collected Poems of AUDRE LORDE.

A GRAM OF &S The poems are based on the daily word game found in the puzzle section of many syndicated newspapers. I end each line with one of the eleven words derived from the title word, while abiding by the other rules of the game: 1. Words must be derived from four or more letters. 2. Words that acquire four letters by the addition of “s,” such as “bats” or “dies” are not used. 3. Only one form of a verb is used.

“BROKEN DANGERFIELD NEWBY VILLANELLE” The poem is inspired by the death of Dangerfield Newby, one of the five black men involved in John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Newby had joined Brown as a last hope to free his wife and six children from slavery. He was the first killed.

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS