Seizure

This was the winter mother told time by my heart

ticking like a frayed fan belt in my chest.

This was the fifties & we were living on nothing

& what of her, the black girl, my own black nurse,

what of her who arrived on Greyhound in the heart

of so dramatic a storm it froze the sleeves at her wrists

& each nostril was rimed with white like salt on a glass,

what of her who came up the dark stair on the limp of her

own bad ticker, weary, arrogant, thin, her suitcase noosed

with rope, in the grip of a rage she came, a black woman,

into our white lives, like a splinter, & stayed. Charming

& brilliantly condescending, she leaned down to kiss “the baby,”

& hissed my little princess & hushed the Jordan & set the chariots

on the golden streets & Mother, I cried to her, & went out like a light.

Source: The Dig (University of Illinois Press, 1992)