I read an article about Zora Neale Hurston in the NY Times a few weeks ago and starting crying when they talked about not tearing down her town to build a freeway because it was her home.
Then I wrote this.

To Zora.


Patron saint of anthropologists, archivists—
of slick soled women
who learned to walk on gravel roads.

Our lady of the ivory tower-
come down to the town of sweet dirt
rose up under a white top Chevrolet.

Come down to listen. Come down to wrap our words
in the circles of your gramophone. Years of hard
frying wafts kitchen smoke in the seams
of your clothes and the roots of your hair. Girl
thinks she can run away from that

is lying unmarked in the corner
of a colored cemetery. Our only cemetery.

Pants and cigarettes make a martyr
of a Christian woman.

Saint Zora, of the upstart women. Make pilgrimage to lay down at her feet
the sounds of truth rolling down the front porch.

Oh Lord. Miracle after death. Sweet
Southern Saint of ours. To save your
town- it is enough.