Ode to Cousin John

…land of shades! – William Blake

You all alone in these streets cousin /
every man for they self in this land… -Prodigy

Your voice, a red and white flag,
an over the spread cloth. Slavery

happened long ago, it means
nothing now. I prepare silence,

practise each time for a calm dinner

         *

but you lift a fork, unsettle the territory.

I can’t stop seeing the child
pulled from a home of hissing

and raised by our grandmother
who was endlessly scraping plates

between us. With her gone

         *

something shifts at our table and you

keep sharpening the “somewhere else”
in me. No, I don’t know what it’s like

to live in a small military town
or how you fit where everyone is white

like you. Do you hold up England

         *

by its gilt edges, best china handles?

What secretly stirs your tea? Cousin,
we all alone in these streets. I wish you

horses in rain and fields of broken gates
I wish you a surprise party of sober mothers

holding Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake.
I wish you glistening grapes and radiated rooms.

         *

When we stood shoulder to shoulder
at our grandmother’s funeral I didn’t hear you cry

but I felt your quivering, saw your red, so red face,
fallen flags in your eyes, Cousin, why couldn’t you

let us see what you were burying? Cousin

         *

I wish sunlight on all your darkest fields.