Tree of Blood

Poisoned apples strew the ground
Beneath a twisted tree, roots
Sunk deep in brother’s blood,
Branches bent with hangman’s noose.
But the beautiful flowers once a year
Take up all attention, women 
In their Sunday hats, men in white shirts,
Children at their play on Easter morning
After the lynching.

Your brother’s blood, your sister’s blood
Cries out from the red earth that
Drank it. The land is polluted
With blood. Your holy places 
Drip crimson. The poison seed
Sprouts in every corner,
Comes up in the cracks 
At the base of your genocidal 
Monuments, along the edges 
Of your haunted cotton fields,
Infects the children’s laughing play.

But we savor the tang of the drug
In the poisoned apple pie, revel
In the adrenal burst that comes
From our unjustified rage, pride
Ourselves in our capacity for 
Murder.
Violent, prideful of our ignorance,
Unmerciful, implacable, unholy.

Is that why our crosses are all empty?
No desire to contemplate the broken
Human form we have perpetrated, too like 
The hanged, the ones tied with wire
To a concrete block and sunk in that
Deep, black river of sorrow, 
Too like the shattered bodies of our
Brothers and sisters. 

But now pray for sunrise and repentance,
Drive murder from your hearts
Lift your brother, your sister, 
Or rather let them lift you, into the light.
There is power in the blood.

Author: Duncan MacNae

Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees. duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com View all posts by Duncan MacNae