Gary David Johnson
THE “WHITE TREE”
(Jena, Louisiana, 2007: The Scottsboro Boys Redux)
So, finally, they chopped the “white tree” down.
But it was far too many years too late
to save that place from shame, which is its
fate:
Deserved disgrace, for many in that town.
For those young men still waste away in cells.
(The “white tree” school has said no welcome
back
to those whose crime was simply being black.)
And in that jail there are no “last-class”
bells.
That tree and all its wretched roots reached
deep,
for it was poisonously fertilized.
Beyond its canopy, few realized
the shameful secrets it had hoped to keep.
A forest can’t survive with such a tree
within it, spreading seed and foul debris.
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THE CONE - ISSUE #5 - SUMMER 2015