Home (from Court Square Fountain— <br />where affluent ghosts still importune <br />a taciturn <br />slave to entertain <br />them with a slow barbarous tune <br />in his auctioned baritone— <br />to Hank Williams' headstone <br />atop a skeleton <br />loose in a pristine <br />white suit and bearing a pristine <br />white bible, to the black bloodstain <br />on Martin King's torn <br />white shirt and Jim Clark's baton, <br />which smashed black skulls to gelatin) <br />was home, at fifteen: brimstone <br />on Sunday morning, badminton <br />hot afternoons, and brimstone <br />again that night. Often, <br />as the preacher flailed the lectern, <br />the free grace I couldn't sustain <br />past lunch led to clandestine <br />speculation. Skeleton <br />and flesh, bone and protein <br />hold—or is it detain?— <br />my soul. Was my hometown <br />Montgomery's molten <br />sunlight or the internal nocturne <br />of my unformed soul? Was I torn <br />from time or was time torn <br />from me? Turn <br />on byzantine <br />turn, I entertain <br />possibilities still, and overturn <br />most. It's routine <br />now to call a hometown <br />a steppingstone— <br />and a greased, uncertain, <br />aleatory stone <br />at that. Metaphors attune <br />our ears to steppingstone, <br />as well a corner-, grind-, and millstone— <br />all obtain <br />and all also cartoon <br />history, which like a piston, <br />struck hard and often <br />that blood-dappled town <br />scrubbed with the acetone <br />of American inattention. Atone <br />me no atoning. We know the tune <br />and as we sing it, we attain <br />a slow, wanton, <br />and puritan <br />grace, grace can't contain.<br /><br />Andrew Hudgins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/steppingstone/
