Flooding Ol’ Jim’s Grave
Ethicist and online education entrepreneur, Russell Willis, emerged as a poet in 2019, beginning with the publication on January 2 of three poems in The Write Launch. Since then, his poetry has been published in Grand Little Things, Frost Meadow Review's Pandemic Poetry, October Hill, Cathexis Northwest, Meat for Tea, The MOON magazine, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Esthetic Apostle, and three anthologies. Russell grew up in and around Texas, was vocationally scattered throughout the Southwest and Great Plains for many years, and is now settled in Vermont with his wife, Dawn.
By Russell Willis
My poem uses the hurricane-induced flooding of southern Louisiana as a metaphor for the racial-justice movements of today.
This storm where lives matter and history is
relegated to the past
not substituted for the Truth
this storm unleashes a tidal surge not unlike
those that drown the bayous of South Louisiana
when a hurricane bears down
flooding Jim Crow’s grave
toppling the stone and
floating the casketed remains downstream