Satsuma Nights
Behind the white houses on blocks
Satsuma trees, bushes, full of orange fruit
Belonging to the Davises Benoits Fontenots.
We were boys then, 9, 10, not eleven, not that old,
Picking and peeling and eating,
So easy to peel, so easy to eat, so easy to steal.
November nights, cold but not too cold, enough
To keep the blood running and the Marshall,
Dallas Cormier, young then, dead now, telling us
With his kind, serious, soft voice, “You boys,
You could get shot, they, those in the white houses
With shotguns, you boys can’t trust them. Go home.”
And three of us did and one remained and while three
Around a campfire in Satch’s back yard, we three
Heard one shotgun from clear across town
Where we learned the one spilled his blood
Onto a Satsuma, one slice half eaten,
Juice running down off his lips.
Hours later the morning dew spread
A blanket so thick the waning fire
Could not beat back the damp, cold
Bloodguilt poisoning innocents
Frozen stiff in the stark stillness
Of a night void of prayer and redemption.
