When I look into my eyes after sunrise
I learn from an old face… and a body out of line
Can’t give up…cause my body’s tell- tale burn likens
The star… burning slow and falling to the ground
Round and round goes the earth…telling
Good and bad times in passing a river of tears
And babies crying trying to suckle-feed dried up breasts
Lacking nourishing milk and love, to make the round and back
Bypassing the old folks back home, them praying
Time-after-time to atone their sins, still
Knowing not who’s listening in.
Babies stomach full, big like a man,
Standing tall still not on their own
The world I’m on, going round and round… slowing down…
Smack dab between three scores and four years…whoa!
Sensing I’d made this lap before, always ending up at birth
Then age, finally at death, and round and round again
Passing cotton stalks, limbs lined with white-balls during August,
Corn stalks with ears of corn and long silky hair: cures all that ails
Pigs wallowing in muddy pigsties, and speckle hen clucking
And cackling trying to save her baby chicks from the big bad wolf
And Momma widowed, young, and wrangling nine youngling alone
Please, please, please driver, may I get off!
“Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, by and by?
In a better home awaiting
In the sky, in the sky? ”
May 29,2014
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem