This Whiteness

Grandfather could so smoothly

pour his evening whiskey and slur

an n-word or five during Lawrence Welk

before the gentle nod off

in his 1950’s recliner green

Aunt would teach school children

and love them so, she said,

even the little black ones,

she said, and still speak of them

diminutively, and of their parents

dismissively, and end the day

with a refreshing front porch lemonade

Some ancestor in Massachusetts

fought for abolition and justice

and spoke of prophets Amos and Jesus

but never imagined in her

white mind wrapped in razor wire

a fullness in blackness,

a greatness, a she and he empowered,

a liberation of herself from her white self

And here I am attentive but in white fog

of my own insolence and actions

my crossing the streets of Chicago

when young black men approach

when I see the protests and riots and think

if you would just…if you could only…

when I make every effort for my white sons

and even writing this poem

and even writing that previous line

cannot end it, this whiteness,

this inherited shame and shamelessness

this enfolding in my brain of what

we ourselves, by our fault,

by our own fault,

by our own most grievous fault,

have wrought, have clung to white-knuckled,

have ignored in our beloveds,

have so blithely pruned from family trees

and cannot prune from ourselves