The Gates Close at Dusk

No one knows what goes on here after dark,
in this field of flat white stones.

Their marble glows, lit by the moon.
Names and dates fly at me like white neon
and each stone has its story.
The trees wave and moan
and beg the wind not to tell me the stories,
the ones I'm not supposed to hear.

The moon compelled me to come here tonight
and sit among these engraved names
of people I never knew -- except you.
Someone has hung a windchime from this tree,
some sad husband who remembered his wife
would always fall asleep better with the music playing.

I lean against this tree listening to the windchime,
remembering when you were two and I was ten.
The moon knows what I'm thinking.
She looks away and hides her face
behind a veil of clouds.
She used to have a brother, too.

Jean Russell

Nestled together in a rollaway bed
in a rundown house
too poor for air conditioning
two black girls in torn pajamas
sleeping through the night,
a safe night in New Orleans
when nothing beckons but a streetlamp.

Two black girls Sharlene and Brenda
almost nine and seven
sleeping in the same bed
limited in girlish toys, limited in life,
children never dreaming of tomorrow.

Somewhere a sound rumbles
Somewhere beyond this lighthouse
of a streetlamp
outside its warm embrace
a wave of sound oncoming
a wave beyond their dreams.

And morning will dawn
on these two little girls
who never dreamt
of dreaming of tomorrow.
If only these two girls weren’t poor
and living in New Orleans.

Jean Russell
Inspired by Arlene Weinstock’s drawing “Predawn Fog”