One Hour Yard Poem

Marilyn Buck

[This poem is read by Dennis Brutus. ]

I step from suffocating stillness
from dank cells and dead air
out!
fleeting green trespasses
forbidding walls
teases my senses taunts prison’s sucking yellow mouth

I am a pale shadowed genie
released from my cell
for one hour
I unwind to receive the coquettish day
I dance
under the blue-washed sky

high, thick-bodied walls cast aspersions
challenge the sun
concertina wire grins razor sharp

birds dance between the teeth

dandelions dig under
send feathery envoys into the breeze
defiant flora gains ground
subversive

a lone caterpillar inches
across concrete wasteland
careful, I let it pass
what pleasure watching caterpillar
travel forward
while I walk in circles

an hour in the sun

August 1990.
Dennis Brutus also reads his own “Letter #18.”

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