"when she was"

 

I had found Buddha (weeping)
among the perennials and the picture frame
of my mother when she was a baby,
when my grandfather worked for the dairy farm,
when my grandfather worked-
for the dairy farm in town
before he had a little store,
before he had a sandwich shop and a store;
a store on a corner in Selma,
in Selma, Alabama sometime before,
during and shortly thereafter that march
(that march that went through Selma
and put Selma on a map and in history books).
And places and places, places
unknown and far away
that are still celebrated and there,
living and dying and dying slowly
until Wal-Mart comes through and revitalizes them…
They march, they march across
the Alfred E. Pettus bridge, but still,
my mother was just a baby
and it was maybe the forties
before the march, before the Wal-Mart Supercenter,
before when she was just a baby.

 

4 Nov 01