Tonight's Poet Corner: Seamus

Seamus
by Belinda Roddie

He was ashamed that his son,
once a good man, was now a
slave driver in the southeast of
Africa. Crops to be yielded, food
to be served to men in white suits and
black cigars and walrus grins under
walrus mustaches. Billowing
smoke from under their tailcoats,
propelling them from their chairs where the
wax oozed from letter stamps and stained
their already red hands red.

Seamus was better than his own son.
He didn't want to be. He didn't think he
had to be. He was the minister at a small
Irish church, where the friends of his
dead wife asked him how it all went so
terribly wrong for little Seamus junior.
Wafers stuck to their tongues and kept them quiet
only for a short while, before the interrogation
started all over again.

He washed his hands of him,
holy water darkening his fingers,
spreading ash across his skin,
sinking into the wrinkles
particle by particle; only dust was all that
carried him to his bed each night
while his son abroad loaded chains
onto black men's shoulders and
led them to toxic water to drink
like sick, stubborn horses.