Cry

I keep thinking of Alan Paton’s book…

Cry, the Beloved Country

I read it when I was

perhaps

14

This was 1987,

when Apartheid was as bad as it ever got

&

Mandela in Robben Island

&

South Africa –

photographs, grainy TV and National Geographic;

no rolling news

showing

the suffering.

and that book,

So beautiful;

Really a long-song in narrative form

That helped shape me

And influenced so much of who I have become.

&

Now I look at the pictures of Obama

And…

And I am crying.

Not that America is beloved of me,

But, from what I have seen, (I’ve not visited) –

But, the books and the paintings and the movies &

Writing as the Pixies play;

I imagine Sal Paradise

flying down the highway at 80 miles an hour,

Short-sleeved shirt,

Lucky Strikes

Desert air blowing

& hopes and dreams

& fragmentation

Of America.