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 graves 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 graves 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 birds,
the farflung young fly South to bury
the old dead.
III
The old women move quietly up
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.
(The stone reads Racher Walker—not “Rachel”—
Loving Wife, Devoted Mother.)
IV
As a young woman, who had known her? Tripping
eagerly, “loving wife,” to my grandfather’s
bed. Not pretty, but serviceable. A hard
worker, with rough, moist hands. Her own two
babies dead before she came.
Came to seven children.
To aprons and sweat.
Came to quiltmaking.
Came to canning and vegetable gardens
big as fields.
Came to fields to plow.
Cotton to chop.
Potatoes to dig.
Came to multiple measles, chickenpox,
and croup.
Came to water from springs.
Came to leaning houses one story high.
Came to rivalries. Saturday night battles.
Came to straightened hair, Noxzema, and
feet washing at the Hardshell Baptist church.
Came to zinnias around the woodpile.
Came to grandchildren not of her blood
whom she taught to dip snuff without
sneezing.
____________
Came to death blank, forgetful of it all.
When he called her “ ’Oman” she no longer
listened. Or heard, or knew, or felt.
V
It is not until I see my first grade teacher
review her body that I cry.
Not for the dead, but for the gray in my
first grade teacher’s hair. For memories
of before I was born, when teacher and
grandmother loved each other; and later
above the ducks made of soap and the orange-
legged chicks Miss Reynolds drew over
my own small hand
on paper with wide blue lines.
VI
Not for the dead, but for memories. None of
them sad. But seen from the angle of her
death.