By Frank X. Walker

(Excerpted from When Winter Come: The Ascension of York)

Ev’rytime I sees a beautiful anything with a mustang heart,
catch the moon with her eye wide open or hear the river
slap a wet rock like a man slap his woman’s thigh at night

I close my eyes an see her standing there, naked
just after a hard rain, belly fulla promises
an I suddenly remembers what huckleberries taste like

then I know, it one thing to force a man to remember
his life as a slave, but it another to expect him to forget
such gifts as these.