Ed Roberson Poems

There is nothing concrete to grasp in
looking into the morning sky
...

riding the bullet train
the view passes by so fast
...

When I worked in the steel mill
the ceiling crane dropped a bolt
...

But for a low bank of cloud,
clear morning, empty sky.
...

I have to leave early in the dark
and hungry to avoid
...

Trees have whole streets
of when they were planted
...

 As at the far edge of circling the country,
facing suddenly the other ocean,
...

May I ask you who
your grandmother died

Her blackness
you pretended we'd assume
a servant's in the photograph

May I ask
did she die herself?

I know you all light
under an umbrella don't tan
and she could be seen

as she had been made too
dark for what the son do.

I saw her years ago after she died
And again today in the market
I asked her I had to

know if she was who I knew    ...    
"Only two things you really has to —

tha's to stay black and die."
Black, yes, but if black leads some to pretend
that you have died

except you're black and alive
who are you?

She is as hundreds of years old as
the stories of the lies
of grandmothers in the cellar    ...    

May I ask who
your grandmother died if she died
herself?
...

To Iretha
A textbook photograph most likely
led me to think the Rosetta Stone the size
of a library's old Webster's Third Edition
or two loaves of bread on a side board,

but here it stands, three tongues, or one mind
that can say three ways we say the one thing,
the breaths and sights of each way in rock,
a milestone in intangibles between them.

Reflected light from outside through the entrance,
duplicating on the glass case the door
image that the stone itself is opens
when you walk around behind it exhibit

the inhibition of letters, and I see you,
not a translation, step through from beyond all description
into the calling of flesh in black skin:
beauty. Beauty. Beauty.
...

Trees have whole streets
of when they were planted

plaqued with when the city is

to inherit them dead

of age almost all at once as if

a natural bombing.





People see a bill not figured in,

a blood red

collection come

like fall's leaf due without fail

an unseen cost of the design:

pale bud and yellow blossom—





though seeming little to do this time

with tense spring

in the window

of dead and dying trees' terms up,

with expecting a life by life replacement—

not this plague of life's time





as a season across the city.

By trial we do, but don't

know how death counts the rings

from trees to clocks,

species to singled soul

at its hour. or on history's days we all die at once.
...