God Shed His Grace On Thee

It is not that the guy was black.
The emblems of blackness on the walls of the home,
jazz like and geometric blacks in poses
with saxophones, with suits, with all the right
bright black colors.  It wasn't that.
It was the lack of poverty there.
It was the overflowing trash in the kitchen,
no one is starving here, no one is alone
in this abject misery, everyone has a cell phone.
It was not the not-one clear place to sit down
to do the paperwork because of clean
laundry in various stages in piles.  It was the three
pennies resting on the floor just inside
the front door that no one bothered to pick up,

week after week for weekly wound care.
It was dirty, not mopped in months.  And perhaps free
of the stigma of a dirty home occupied by black folks
doing black things, running beauty schools,
no one tried to change my opinion.
I had to ignore the missing window
in the car out in the driveway, I had to bring
my own paper towels.  I had to remind
myself of the home I just left,
the one where the white folks scurried
around for hours to clean up
the living room for my visit, I had to
remind myself of their porch piled high
with a mixture of last Xmas fleece throws
broken Crock-Pots and torn-up old recliners, I had to shake
the thought that I might have heard a rat there.
I had to shake all these notions, shake the nervous
epiphany, the horrible reality of dying in this mess
as they all will one day, rushing to move the sofas
for the EMTs.  The hoarders and DES obesities,
the veterans and mothers of girls who died of fentanyl
as if by accident, the rules now, not the exceptions,
up to our necks now, no one on the lawns.

I had to remind myself that this is the America we hope to save.
This is the America we know we have to.