And suddenly it’s raining, streaking train windows.
And light becomes a bird, a particular flutter.
What shadows let slip, tattoo patterns on skin,
repairs with needle and ink,
and the whisper of lineage. 
To be a man, to be black, to be a black man,
is a dangerous journey. My heart is a knot
burling a staff, wisdom won blow by blow.
Father, I say, Father.
Mercy. Come, mercy, come.
Brother, we share genes so old 
England was still black, and Africa
was the only present tense in the world. 
As we unzip tracks in flashes of light,
I seek an impossible dream.
Yet all rivers flow to the ocean.
All the doors white men
closed in my father’s face
cannot compare to the void,
in which my mother found no door.
Mercy. Come, mercy, come.
This is no lament; women deserve our awe.
In Africa we say,  He who strikes a woman strikes stone.
If women called out from all their loss
and in all their power, blood would drown everything.
And does that first black woman regret letting us live?
Still, ritual is journey, atonement is real.
As you lay dying, I asked, What is your biggest regret?
Every kindness withheld,  you said. 
Every flicker of pleasure denied,  you said.
Look,  you said,  sunlight.