Decoration

Decoration –


Families used to walk
Along Dula Road in the summer,
And the children could turn,
Without looking,
Into the curves and banks
Of the unpainted pattern,
To the heartbeat song that always
Poured from the ditches,
Milkweeds, Queen Anne’s Lace,
And from the forest walls
That were another kind
Of green entirely.


The old women always wore
Darkrimmed glasses, square black shoes,
Dresses that buttoned down thin and
Frail. Their eyes always followed the
Ground, to the curve of the road. Their
Voices held a strain, unmusical,
Sorrowful even in passing.


Even their church singing
Was never graceful, as that
Was their place to leave things
Forever behind them.


In deep summer, I would walk
To the yard at dusk, without
Knowing, just to be.

I would stand at the concrete
Corner post, where my grandfather
Once pitched me over,
Barely in time, muttering curses,
To turn and strike an Angus bull
On the forehead with his hammer;
Where we pulled a bloody chicken
From its wooden box, flapping
Red drops through the garden
Without understanding.


Late summer, we put flowers
On the graves after church, and
In the earliest memories, were
Some women who there vented
Lifetimes of madness, worries,
Lost children, fearful dreams,
Visions of a glorious after – invoking
All things into a wailing call to God,
Sprawling on the ground, their bunned
Hair coming untangled, without a word
Said to our child’s eyes.


Along the Parkway home, sometimes
We could pass Brown Mountain, where,
In early fall, false lights would balloon
Up from the gorge, entwined as living
Things. Where my father once found
A dead calf in the pasture, bloodless,
Missing a leg, taken neatly at the shoulder.
Where I stood in the cooling dusk
With my grandfather, in a moment
Among millions, unremarkable
In every way, for some reason
Burned deep in my mind.


A child whose eyes are open
To the world, who keeps a part
Of that world alive, who feeds the
Energy of those living times,
Who feels the names of places,
Who reads the words in eyes
And hands… This child can
Never be lost in time. Can never find
Themselves erased in the misery
Of present without reference,
In the ignorance of places that
Only are now, only are one thing,
Only are remembered in false
Light.