Black Jesus

After the man was lynched,
the hickory licked lightning
from a white sky.
The fiddler came that night and cut its trunk.
The devil burned his hand,
the scald of wood was still alive.
The wood, the body he cut free from burn
and blood and ash cried,
Sweet Jesus.
He listened. Long.
As he worked, a fiddle
flew from the crotch
of that scorched tree,
through the noose that made
those milk pale soles,
those jerked blue feet
arrive in me.
My smouldering
witness never caught fire.
Jesus weeps
as I swing in the tree
of my indifference:
that stone cold fiddle   
waits in me.