Songs of Anisha
“America Tonight,”
by Kola Tubosun
It’s just the rustling leaves on the ground – the gentle breeze
that blows. It’s the glow of lights around the evening trees.
It’s not the length of the open street, nor the whistling air, the bend
of the arrows that point north when minds looked west. It’s not the end
of boulders, the open lines on double lane tar. It’s not the skid marks
on roads heading east, not the ears of corn in farms on roadside shacks
It’s the smiles in her joyful eyes, the love the love that I see around.
It’s the warm nudge, a subtle touch of flesh, or a gentle sound.
I felt it tonight, within hopes on the faces I see wherever I look.
Graceful laughs under branches, and falling rain around the brook.
I smell it in the cold night air, brown like the leaves of autumn’s rust
I touch it in hugs of fleece, wondrous wool, fabric mufflers of trust.
It’s in the sound of music, softened in bits of sweet tingling taste.
It’s in the rustling of leaves on the ground – a season of deathly waste.
It’s America tonight, Midwest, in the folds of a gradually freezing host:
I stand with words as shield, the less squelching shawls I know the most.
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