For Tookie Williams
Topic: poetry
For Tookie Williams
dead at the hands of
the People of the State
of California

Portland, OR.
Leave it to the western sky
to steal a scrap from the absolute,
then make good with a display
of soaked evergreens and moss.
No use. For me, these bladed ridgelines
won’t cut cleanly again
until the warmer months.

Days ago to the south,
a governor performed offstage,
and for this a good man,
not pure, but good enough, finally
so unexceptional, was strapped
down and subjected,
as an unbiased source
put it, to a “medical procedure.”
I thought of Socrates’ “beverage,”
and how sacrifice
comes to the table brewed
so strong it must be
taken at once, and in full.
But one man's sentence
is another's crime.

Historical cycles turn
toward collisions, and turn away.
The apparatus of information harvests
more and more dead weight
till the hungry drag it
to barren ground where
it rusts more with every sunset.
Too soon only questions
skitter around the wreck.

Imagine how it was
when the words gave out,
and the governor’s men
boxed the decent man
and finally discharged him.
That’s when I started
hearing metal against metal
and footsteps growing louder,
and when I found myself
newly afraid of echoes.