Another Strange Land: Downpour off Cape Hatteras (March, 1864)

                          for my ancestor 
                          in the Pennsylvania 25th Colored Infantry 
                          aboard the Suwanee

First a penny-sized hole in the hull 
                     then eager saltwater rushing over 
    us and clouds swirling and clotting 
            the moonlight—no time to stop and look upon it 
as the hole becomes an iron mouth, 
    makes strange sounds, peels and tears 
                        open iron as iron should not open—

muffled and heavy         us becoming underwater 
                     we confused the metal echo and thunder 
         as the same death knell from God’s mouth—

we been done           floated all this way down  
           in dark blue used 
      uniforms, how far from slavers’ dried-out fields 
in Virginia, Pennsylvania—wherever

                                         we came from now we    
         barely and only 
                    see and hear an ocean 
                                        whipped into storm

not horror, not glory, but storm 
                   not fear, not power, but focus 
             on the work of breathing, living as the storm 
rocks us and our insides upside down        turns 
                   hard tack into empty nausea—

                 so close to death I thought I saw the blaze- 
            sick fields of Berryville again, the curling fingers 
                             of tobacco, hurt fruit and flower— 
                      but no, but         no.

             I say no to death now. I’m nobody’s slave 
                                    now. I’m alive     and not alone, 
one of those      who escaped and made    myself 
                 a soldier a weapon a stone in David’s sling 
       riding the air above the deep. I grow more dangerous 
to those who want me. I ain’t going back 
                                 to anywhere I been before.

                 I grab a bucket. You grab a bucket. We the 25th 
       Pennsylvania Colored Infantry, newly formed 
                            and too alive and close to free 
          to sink below this midnight water. 36 hours—chaos 
shoveling-lifting-throwing       ocean back into ocean 
                         to reach land and war in the Carolinas. 

       I stole my body back       from death and going down 
                        more than once. I steal my breath 
           tonight and every night      I will not drown.