My Arkansas Maya Angelou

There is a deep brooding
In Arkansas.
Old crimes like moss pend
From poplar trees.
The sullen earth
Is too much too
Red for comfort.

Sunrise seems to hesitate
And in that second
Lose its
Incandescent aim, and
Dusk no more shadows
Than the noon.
The past is brighter yet

Old hates and
Ante-bellum lace, are rent
But not discarded
Today is yet to come
In Arkansas.
It writhes. It writhes in awful
Waves of brooding