a. langston's negro
spoke mighty: of rivers;
my white boy
speaks of popup ranch houses,
the crucifixion of nuclear families
who locust-swarm prime farmland
with no ambition
to ever speak of rivers.
b. i remember, the concrete tubular crawl space
that could have been a river.
it bordered my growing-up house,
its entrance shrouded by tangles of bushes
and knots of shrubbery. the tube
was actually a rain sewer, to prevent the street overhead
from ever being flooded from the dregs of a hurricane.
i remember, pushing aside
those stubborn shrubs and belligerent bushes,
forcing my way into the narrow crawl space,
a suburban spelunker of the highest order.
right after a thunderstorm's naked fury, the tube
was a river of unstoppable speed,
and i would never venture close to it.
i could picture myself being carried away
by this simple sewer's journey to the sea, riding the reckless current
to the edge of a real civilization, to the frontier
of an amateur zanadu.
c. langston's negro
could speak of rivers,
with the authority of a tour guide
because langston's negro
was never a white boy
spoiled by suburbia.
