OF BONES & BREATH
Bury me, my bones,
& the balance of my flesh
in Ebenezer
with my mother & sisters’ bones.
(You know, my Marcus had no grave.)
It is my brittle body
of 93 years
that you leave there,
the bones of a woman
who has lived her life
and died her death
in the time of fullness.
These bones once stood
& layed at five feet seven.
hip bones that expanded,
shifted, unlocked
supple in their sockets
through seven labours
and more.
Bones that swayed, rocked and swung
to Ray Charles’ Hit the Road Jack
and Nat’s Ramblin’ Rose,
Marcus loved that song too,
and oooohh I just can’t forget
Billie’s What a Little Moonlight Can do.
So you be brave now
on this final walk with my body on Friday.
I was once woman
who also starched and bleached
your father’s white shirts
with boiled argo starch
while we listened to broadcasts
of Jackie Robinson running us
home to glory.
This is me now stripped to the bone.
hips your father touched – gone!
breasts your gums cut- gone!
You see my bareness
and how bones join together
to shape the symmetry of living.
And when the skeleton returned
I was not afraid.
II
Don’t cry for me long.
He said: Weep not for me
but for yourselves & your children.
I now understand what that means
from this place freed of my body.
And I bequeath to you
my entire spiritual estate.
Yes, you had a mother who could pray
even in my feebled brain
I still prayed.
I would gladly bear your cross
but it is your journey.
Mine is done.
And so give me my final walk on Friday.
It is a good day to be buried.
Let my full-bodied grandsons carry me.
Let my granddaughters walk with me
in a beauty of their own making.
So with your arms around each other
walk away from the darkened grave.
Take my spirit with you.
Leave my body there and walk away, I say,
with your children.
I am with you.
I live on in the prayer, the chant,
the meditation and the dance.
He said: Let the dead bury the dead.
And I, your everlasting mother,
go on into eternity.
In my last choking breath
I still groaned
Thy will be done!
