The Overseer’s Dream of His Right Hand
By Michael R. Burch
I stumbled, aghast,
into a valley of dust and bone
where all men become,
at last, the same color.
There a skeletal figure
groped through blonde sand
for the stern right hand
he once knew so well —
A hand now more white
than he had wielded before.
But he paused, unsure,
for he could not tell
without the whip’s frenetic hiss
which savage white hand was his.
Copyright © 2021 by Michael R. Burch.