Greek Skin
for my mother’s father, Gus Johnson
In a Kentucky coal mine he fell across the track
and a loaded coal car cut off his right arm.
This world offers no shelter to nervous pilgrims;
this world takes a dim view of pain even as it inflicts it,
as if some people were meant to starve,
as if some people were meant to speak
English with a Greek accent,
but my mother loved him so much that his death
became her deepest grief, and when she crossed
the bridge that connects this world with his, I hope
he met and greeted her with both arms,
he won’t let her fall through a hole in the sky, will he?
And though he never had the chance to speak
a word to me, I think he must have been a multitude
of races and climates, my blood senses his Greek skin
was tinged with Africa, my mother’s darkness
and my father’s whiteness left me an odd shade of gray.
It’s not so much confusion as an unwillingness to pray—
Yet many fold their hands when trees lash in the violent air.
But if he knew my concern, he could wipe from my mind
the dust that blew in from faraway places
where they cut down all the trees
and cut off the hands of innocent thieves
and Greek slaves slaughtered each other
to entertain a Roman tyrant.
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