Lest We Forget
This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 4 No. 4, "Generations: Women in the South." Find more from that issue here.
Here three strands of barbed wire kept
the uningenious cows
out of the woodlot so they would not
spoil their milk at blunder against trees.
The wire’s down this fifty years at least.
Only this poplar, thickened like a woman
between the unrelenting bands, bark cinched
at knee and waist and neck, has overgrown
what choked her. She witnesses.
Do not forget the poplar, or the fence.
I write this for the beauty of a woman’s face:
black, deep-lined, grown old in Birmingham.