waiting on the mayflower

“what, to the american slave, is your 4th of july?” —frederick douglass i.  august 1619 arrived in a boat, named and unnamed, twenty, pirated away from a portuguese slaver, traded for victuals. drowned in this land of fresh, volatile clearings and folk with skin like melted cowrie shells. soon shedding servitude. soon reaping talents sown on african soil. after indenture, christians, colonists. not english, but not yet not-white. antoney and isabella, whose marriage stretched the short shadows of america’s early afternoon into the dusky reaches of evening, whose conjugal coitus spent first the choice coin of africa on rough virginian citizenship, baptized their son, william, into the church of england. ii.  december 1638 fear must have shuddered into boston on the backs of true believers — men and women of an unadorned god — deep in the heavy black fabric of their coats and dresses like a stench. black a mark of pride they wore as if branded, never dreaming they could take it off. envy anticipated their advent. glittered at them, settling in, from the knife blades of the massachusetts. seeped like low-pitched humming from the fur lining the natives’ warm blankets. but desire docked in 1638. in from the harbor flocked a people whose eyes sparked like stars, even near death. whose hair promised a mixture of cotton and river water and vines, a texture the fingers ached for. who wholly inhabited a skin the midnight color of grace that clarified the hue of the pilgrims’ woolen weeds. fear and envy claimed pride of place, put desire’s cargo to good use. iii.  march 1770 that night, crispus attucks dreamed. how he’d attacked his would-be master and fled in wild-eyed search of self- determination. discarded virginia on the run and ran out of breath in salt-scented boston. found there, if not freedom, fearlessness. a belief in himself that rocked things with the uncontrolled power of the muscular atlantic, power to cradle, to capsize. awoke angry again at the planter who’d taken him for a mule or a machine. had shouldered a chip the size of concord by the time the redcoat dared to dare him. died wishing he’d amassed such revolutionary ire in virginia. died dreaming great britain was the enemy. iv.  july 4th: last but not least 17-, 18-, 19-76 and still this celebration’s shamed with gunpowder and words that lie like martyrs in cold blood. africa’s descendents, planting here year after year the seeds of labor, sweating bullets in this nation’s warts, have harvested the rope, the rape, the ghetto, the cell, the fire, the flood, and the blame for you-name-it. so today black folks barbeque ribs and smother the echoes of billie’s strange song in sauces. drink gin. gladly holiday to heckle speeches on tv. pretend to parade. turn out in droves for distant detonations, chaos, controlled as always, but directed away from us tonight. stare into the mirror of the sky at our growing reflection, boggled by how america gawks at the passing pinpoints of flame, but overlooks the vast, ebony palm giving them shape.