Looking Without Seeing

A mother of swirling black smoke bore you
Bundled in burlap
Atop burning earth's dust bowl

Before you

A life of sweat tainted tobacco leaves and cotton bales
Shrouded in tight braids of hate's acrid air

While above...

Above were only your father's cries of mercy
Filling the grit dense clouds
As Jim Crow rode the thunder
Looking down to make more the same
More swaddling to construe miscreant

Still

Painfully

Some of us
Considering history
Peer skyward
See the many blind eyes
Instead of stars
And remind ourselves
The past always sends forward its remains
To be a haunting presence
Urging we look at
What we are truly perceiving

As mistakes reborn for today

If we dare see