Solitary Confinement Hayneville, Alabama: 1965 Poem by Gregory Orr

Even as the last bars clang shut
and I start to rub the purple ache
clubs left on shoulders, ribs,
and shins, my mind is fashioning
an invisible ladder, its rungs
and lifts of escape.
They've taken the SNCC pamphlets
but let my keep a book
of Keats—poems reminiscent
of my sad, adolescent affair
with the coffin-maker's daughter,
which taught me many things,
including carpentry.

And when at dusk
the trusty held for car theft brings
my tray of grits and fatback, it
won't matter so much that, groaning
and puking, I'll be sick for hours.
Imagination is good wood; by midnight
I'll be high as that mockingbird
in the magnolia across the moonlit road.