My son wishes to return to his home,
his quest marred with the report of differences.
He is strong stone, but he wonders if skin color,
a gesture in eyes, a violence against diversity,
can make the pathway a path of gardens
and not shards of broken concrete,
a mosaic of torn glass, a system of closed doors.
The police car's headlights go to bright,
a few minutes later, the lights atop flare into being,
then a siren, soft at first, then a hurricane
after the first calm: He pulls over, rolls down his window,
places his hands on the steering wheel
as we taught him and waits, seat belt still attached,
eyes facing forward. He does not ask: Why did
you stop me? He already knows the answer.
He waits for the officer to tell him why. This we
also taught him. In a place of white fear,
he is ready for whatever is to happen.
We had reports, the officer says, of an African-American
driving the type of car you are driving.
Then he sees my son's wife, his baby daughter,
and knows this is not the right one. Yet he feels
he has to pursue this, escalate it to another cliff,
but my son is polite, tells him he has just now
arrived across the river and is heading home
for a visit with his parents. By now there are three other
police cars on the scene, flashing lights waking the child,
his wife nervous, my son with the PhD in botany,
molecular science, metabolomics, has come home.
Poetry Atlas has other poems about Missouri in the USA.