Musings in a Time of Crisis XXIX

No nation rose so white and fair,

or fell so pure of crimes.

~ Philip Stanhope Worsley

1835-1866

"Worsley's Lines to General Lee"

But as you landed, a piece of you fell off, broke away

And inside, nothing but air.

This whole time, you were hollow.

~  "Hollow"

Vanessa Kisuule

Bristol City Poet

_________________________

No one will grieve the loss

of Edward Colston, knocked from
his perch in Bristol. Taking

him down, unharbored, is
how black brothers and sisters

remodel the thrust defiant fist
of Jesse Owens, replay Kaepernick

taking a knee. Everywhere,
from Washington, D.C., to L.A.,

from the tobacco fields
of Richmond to Deep South cities'

cobbled streets, the old monuments
fall with protested memories

of four hundred years of blood
spilled in the holds of slave ships,

among New World forced laborers,
in childrens' chartered colonies,

behind white masters' closed doors,
on police batons and bayonets, as

traded human flesh. Hungry consumers
of lives worked with whips tumble,

toppled in public squares, unclean
auction markets cease, are put aflame.

The balls and chains broken, marked
backs of cotton pickers, cooks,

domestics, sex workers, produce
pickers, car-wash attendants,

cleaning crews finally straighten,
unburdened by other men's histories

and towering high above the bannered
crosses alight in Jim Crow's ashes.