Airman's Wife

Airman’s Wife


My landlady slapped a cockroach to death
on her table without missing a word
of the story she was telling about an old
drunk niggra her daddy scaped up off
the tracks in Biloxi in 1923.

And I was 18 then in 1966 and fed the bread
she was kneading that day to the birds
even though we didn’t have enough money
for food at the commissary.

And nights the train would rattle
by our bedroom window, shaking the glass
and cause the fig tree to drop
her ripe fruit to the spongy ground
and the shrimp fisherman sang, coming home loaded.

I was homesick for Vermont
even though it was January and
the mountains would come up white
in the dawning;

And here, the Mississippi Delta
heaved and oozed into the sluggish sea
where dogfish swam and young
airmen from anywhere stopped
me at my walking, just to talk.