four score—somewhere between

the War Between the Stakes—your

grandfather Preston James (Preston slave)

was born. He might not have learned to

toddle or maybe his lips only wandered

the studied edges of the alphabet and

 just like that, that smoke was over.

    But a little over or a little less than

eighty years later war rose (again)

from its bullet-riddled bed. Another

Stewart, Harry—who was in that air—

    was junior. Harry, who was senior,

  was the wedge between slavery

and strafing, between Preston James

and Harry Thaddeus, between reconstruction

and flight instructors. Daddy Harry’s older

brother (who too was junior) had been the

wedge between Harry Sr. and their father

   —senior wheelwright slave-born Preston.

     Yes, Preston James Stewart Senior. Preston

James Stewart Junior: brother Harry Thaddeus

Stewart who didn’t senior until he had the son

(I am writing of): Harry Thaddeus Stewart Jr.

    By naming his progeny Harry, Harry senior

  mimicked his father—Preston Sr.—who lost

his genetic echo to water that opened its

accidental hands. Then clapped. then clapped.

until Preston Jr. sank into the sound. But now

instead of picking cotton, Harry Jr. is picking

clouds over Alabama to knife through over

  the moody dark earth where his granddaddy

    picked short-staple cotton. Harry doing stuff

Preston Sr. could never have imagined, ‘cause

back then the only things with Alabama wings

were narrow-billed Nuthatches or ha ha

   Yellowhammers. Doing stuff his grand

 daddy couldn’t fathom because the enslaved

could not raise their noggins to (evil)

eye master’s dank eyes (imagining each bat

of the lashes: a whip/a lash) and certainly

not raise their heads because they were

headed toward the heavens, where they might

 sneer at, might look down on their master’s

  freckled pate, target that balding spot

towards the rear, hair swirling like

the Milky Way as it unspooled

one galactic strand at a time.