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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