Paul Simon says
the Mississippi Delta is shining like a national guitar,
but I say it weeps;

when I step from our cushioned coach bus
onto Helena-West Helena,
I can hear the music coming out of the ground, Jemar,
but it’s the Blues,
and tears,
and as I learn, I suffer;
I suffer because Jackie Robinson told me
that I am not free until every one of my brothers and sisters is free,
I suffer because the plaques at the end of the exhibits
at the Lorraine Motel told me progress,
but I am here in the South
seeing how inextricably complicated
everything still is,
unable to be reduced to a paragraph
to be read through tourist lenses,
unable to be fully comprehended;
I am here, but I can’t do it justice
if there is no justice here
in the Mississippi Delta,
with towns that look like ghosts,
but inhabited,
without streetlights or strawberries;
to escape is to never return
and I feel hopeless;

but as the day expands,
I am introduced to Delta sweat
in the shape of memory;
the Emmett Till museum is not sponsored
by the Smithsonian,
it is constructed from the earth
with Delta grit;
it is unpolished,
patched and rusty,
but it breathes,
homegrown organic,
cultivated by local hands
to preserve the truth;
and Fannie Lou Hamer is not buried
in a cemetery with stars,
she rests in a park in Ruleville, Mississippi,
in the middle of a rundown residential neighborhood,
but how fitting that
the Civil Rights Mama herself
should rest in ground zero,
with people like her
to hear her voice pulsing through the ground;

so Paul Simon, the Mississippi Delta weeps,
but it weeps while walking,
ever onward,
ever shining.

Forums: 

Reviews

No reviews yet.