When the Good Lord Willed the Creek to Rise
CHARNELL PETERS
When the Good Lord Willed the Creek to Rise
he sent a white man angel / to tell a white man / to save man / and all the white men /
worked on a boat / and the white women / joined them two by two / and they fished /
the dark people out from the water / and fastened them in / so they wouldn’t fall out /
and took them back and said / Lord it is finished / and the Good Lord / willed the creek
to die down / and the black men and women / were happy to be saved / so they worked
the land / to pretty, deep songs / and lived in their own small wooden boats / all the
black men and women say / their children / fall out the boats and drown / and it makes
them sing deep, long songs / but the white men say / the Good Lord said / no creek
shall rise again / no one can be drowning / just look at the rainbow / in the oil by your
feet
Photo by John Rourke on Unsplash
Charnell Peters's poem appears in Issue 42: Forming One Another
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The Waking is an online literary magazine and a part of the Ruminate creative community that houses high-quality literary writing about what it’s like to be human. We are interested in short-form prose and image-text hybrid work. This art can be beautiful, it can be strange, we just ask that it feels true.