I Hear America Spinning

This is a poem I wrote years ago that went into my manuscript for my Master's Thesis. It was the last poem in the thesis. It sort of sums up how I feel about where we were, and where I hope we are going.

I Hear America Spinning

the lush land is divided
by the line of the body
in the loneliness of tall grasses

Barn with ten yellow birds
Perched on the peak of its roof

Grotesque cadaver behind the anthill,
melting into the earth
redness, brown and yellow
death juices seeping into black dirt

Worms and eaters like buzzards
take long thin pieces of meat
sail slowly with them
hanging

Hair growing
Nails growing
The land listening to the body,
body never hearing land
Soak up rain, rigor-
mortis sets in

Mother, Mother, Mother
Courage to take her Beloved
by her own hand in lieu
of rotten black slavery

Strange cutting machines under
purple-lipped observers
hands ready for bouncing and circling
on stage in the moonlight

White America running from
the Brahmas in a field of low grain,
green still, not yellow or brown
sky dark christened with
hundred-thousand pound clouds

Whirling dervish, spinning
mystic in the morning to
try to make the world right