Sour Apples (Free Verse)

The magnolia'’s drunk of blood and
fattened on its sorrows, and
in the swamps the alligator
has passed through rice fields and
seen their chains, their fetters,
as they labor in the mud
and the mockingbird has sung
over long, white rows of cotton,
or whistled in the cane
or warbled by the riverside,
down where the tobacco grows

and the stains are on my hands,
and their chains have become my chains,
and where I go I take them
for they are harnessed to my name.

Yet the blossoms on the trees
remain white and fragrant,
and the alligator’s armor
as indomitable as a hickory, and
mockin’birds still don’t do nuthin’
but sing folk pretty songs,

and so I wear the chains and
bear the scars
and cut away the wormhole,
for the apple might be sour
as green apples always are,
but the center is not rotten
and I was never one for sugar