will they know me?

you can go home ... even being a stranger there

will they know I am home

when they see me on their street

abuzz in wonder at who and why I am

strange and misplaced but undaunted?

 

will they see a stranger

be suspicious of the outsider

resent the curious interloper

who looks through them as though not there?

 

i might be a five-oh sniffing for clues

in their no-snitch badland of urban-isms

staring at a spot on their proud ‘hood concrete

where colored boys spilt blood fifty years ago

 

where i walked a puppy and climbed the steps

of a stoop to a building long-since knocked down

do they hear the loud country talk of newcomers

escaping jim crow into dire tenement poverty?

 

their stares and leers and glares will beseech me

please fear them as they fear the outside world

from whence I came to this place called home

eyes and ears will fix upon me suspiciously

 

will they know I fear not to tread here

as it was decided a lifetime ago to fear not

that this is a good place to live when we came

from places we knew were only good for dying

 

will they know? how could they? why would they?

the persistence of commonplace striving and yearning

brought me here, sent me forth, now beckons me back

to this bronx street that once was not a ghetto block

 

 

Reviews

[Birdman313]

another great poem you have pened