The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005

Fifteen Years

44 FiFteen yearS “To be or not to be...” There were worse sentences n lfe, twenty years just for drvng the car, fifteen for manslaughter when you were only settlng a grudge, or the bare number caught by necessty when cops drve through a black neghborhood wth a hard-on for black men, some cops black themselves and dsapponted. So ths lfe was not so bad, I thought at tmes, the tanks of chemcals, the roar of engnes, our worker bodes beng msshapen, stretched out past where they should go, despte the strength. We could go longer than we thought at tmes, workng double and trple shfts n the steel mlls, our lves lved wth coworkers, our famles the strangers. Home was not home wthout some dsconnect, somethng to do when the starng faces we slept wth and fed held ponted questons paychecks could not answer. & when a coworker brother ded, t was the loss of the breathng besde you, the hand that moved you out of the way of the crane or the sharpened edge of thngs, the hand that showed you mercy when you could not cry. These thngs I greve when I thnk of ths tme, ths sentence when I had no vson of how to be. ...