I was grown up North / Yet 

    Raised in a Southern household

Where breath of my 

Ancestors 

Cast Dice 

on the promise

Of a Great Migration

 

Me / Progeny of domestic immigrants

    In search of Reconstruction / Still

Confused migratory birds / We nested 

In houses carved from ice / Traveled

    Home only when the sun resumed

Its lengthy arc / Swallowing

Ribbons of highway we straddled 

Time / Over the Mason-Dixon

Back into States that fought

    To keep their slaves / Hear

The echo / Black Moses awakening

Tin roof shack 

Up Country sand hills 

Our target 

Destination

 

Born a Keystone with roots in Palmetto

The scent of white pine and hot sand

My annual welcome mat / Whether

Holed up North 

Or hunkered down South

We prayed the same prayers

Sang the same songs

Always knew it was the (same) blood

Hot-sauce and vinegar applied lovingly to the same greens

Generations of umbilical tethering

My ports of entry

 

Settlers decamped

In a foreign land / We left

    The cotton to its own devices / Nurtured 

Families on streets of soot-stained

cities by streetlight

candlelight / Sparks of molten

Steel / Country customs

Our Southern ways enshrined

    In perpetuity 

Recycling lives / Recycling everything

 

Momma used Crisco oil when she fried

Her pork chops

Chicken 

Wings and corn / Combined with

Fatback it always gave up the greasy ghost

With plenty left over to drizzle 

Back in the can once

That culinary currency had a chance to cool down

    The can that rested behind the stove / All

Red white and blue / That bottomless 

Cylindrical well / Deep enough 

To hold coffee grounds

And cloudy marbles

Silver dollars / Paper presidents

Bicentennial quarters / Rusty nails

But primarily valued

For the salty-spicy amalgam 

Of drippings procured to build 

The next feast on the back of a previous meal

 

Have you never tasted 

Green tomatoes in Bacon grease fried

For years we had no toaster / Browned

 Our bread in the bottom 

Of the broiler / Slight

Kiss of butter / Granulated sugar

A childhood confectioner’s solemn delight

 

Without fail 

We issued Thank You / Please and

Yes Ma’am

Don’t act surprised

Such courtesies are still expected

Especially on the sabbath 

When we got down

Like our Carolina cousins

White-gloved Communion Sundays and

Watch Night services / Pastor’s anniversary

Tent revivals under the stars where the 

Same Holy Ghost descended from God’s Heavenly throne

 

In Jesus’ name / It was all the same

My brothers and sisters

The very same

It was all the same