Plantation's Corn

Plantation’s Corn
 
 
Then our guide pointed to the hole in the barn floor.
Bored by a slave, she said, the one who sacked
the plantation’s corn for market.
Sly feet swept stray kernels
into the crawl below, what hands would recover
after twilight for a wanting family.
She talked on, as I thought of the night
they caught him.
How he must have stood there,
legs abuzz, pulse thick in his ears.
How he couldn’t explain
why he was there that hour,
or why his pockets were full,
or why a child’s hunger was no pardon.
And after they took him behind the courthouse
and hanged him, how his master,
whom history remembered with a plaque,
ended that evening,
inching the wick higher on his lamp
to read the Scripture more clearly,
perhaps Matthew, skimming over
that part about the merciful obtaining
mercy.
 
 
originally published in The Comstock Review