Black Cowboys

Rainey William's playground was the Mott Haven streets Where he ran past melted candles and flower wreaths Names and photos of the young black faces Whose death and blood consecrated these places Rainey's mother said "Rainey, stay at my side For you are my blessing, you are my pride It's your love here that keeps my soul alive I want you to come home from school and stay inside" Rainey'd do his work and put his books away There was a channel that showed a western movie everyday Lynette brought him home books on the black cowboys of the Oklahoma range And the Seminole scouts that fought the tribes of the Great Plains Summer come and the days grew long Rainey always had his mother's smile to depend on Along a street of stray bullets, he made his way To the warmth of her arms at the end of each day Come the fall, the rain flooded these homes In Ezekiel's valley of dry bones It fell hard and dark to the ground It fell without a sound Lynette took up with a man whose business was the boulevard Whose smile was fixed in a face that was never off guard In the pipes 'neath the kitchen sink his secrets are kept In the day, behind drawn curtains in Lynette's bedroom, he slept Then she got lost in the days The smile Rainey depended on dusted away The arms that held him were no more his home He lay at night his head pressed to her chest, listening to the ghost in her bones In the kitchen Rainey slipped his hand between the pipes From a brown bag pulled five hundred dollar bills and stuck it in his coat side Stood in the dark at his mother's bed Brushed her hair and kissed her eyes In the twilight Rainey walked to the station on streets of stone Through Pennsylvania and Ohio his train drifted on Through the small towns of Indiana the big train crept As he lay his head back on his seat and slept He woke and the towns gave way to muddy fields of green Corn and cotton and endless nothing in between Over the rutted hills of Oklahoma the red sun slipped and was gone The moon rose and stripped the earth to its bone