I
They have fenced in the dirt road
that once led to Wards Chapel
A.M.E. church,
and cows graze
among the stones that mark my family’s graves.
The massive oak is gone from out the church yard,
but the giant space is left
unfilled;
despite the two-lane blacktop
that slides across
the old, unalterable
roots.
II
Today I bring my own child here;
to this place where my father’s
grandmother rests undisturbed
beneath the Georgia sun,
above her the neatstepping hooves
of cattle.
Here the graces soon grow back into the land.
Have been known to sink. To drop open without
warning. To cover themselves with wild ivy,
blackberries. Bittersweet and sage.
No one knows why. No one asks.
When Burning Off Day comes, as it does
some years,
the graces are haphazardly cleared and snakes
hacked to death and burned sizzling
in the brush… The odor of smoke, oak
leaves, honeysuckle.
Forgetful of geographic resolutions as bird,
the farflung young fly South to bury
the old dead.
III
The old women move quietly and touch Sis Rachel’s face.
“Tell Jesus I’m coming,” they say.
“Tell him I ain’t goin’ to be
long.”
My grandfather turns his creaking head away from the lavender box.
He does not cry. But looks afraid.
For years he called her “Woman”;
shortened over the decades to
” ‘Oman.”
On the cut stone for ” ‘Oman’s” grave
he did not notice
they had misspelled her name.
