Balance Due, Always

              —for Ella Jackson Lewis

                                               By Rudolph Lewis

The sweet loam of earth
draws her walnut body like a magnet
iron in a distant embrace
as she tap-taps from room to room.

Here I’ve returned
to the half-century house of my youth
her husband built
to celebrate & remember
her ninety years and two of struggle and loss.

In these crowning years
thunder rumbles on the cloudy horizon.

A black summer butterfly bounces
on the breezes of mid-August heat.

On family land and church,
she’s laid to rest for resurrection
sons and daughters of antebellum slaves
—a mother, a father, a husband.

Seven siblings gone to glory
yet she remains dignified in a three-legged stance.

Two daughters and a son
have taken reluctant leave to meet their Maker.

Life does not always make sense
in the prism of a mother’s lament & tears.

Three daughters live!
And nineteen grandchildren grown with offspring!

The sun is in its downward wing.
Jerusalem empties its congregation.

The praise-singers now silent
as the shades shorten in the open field.

Old pleasures and conquests
recede heavily in bloated, sagging flesh.

Nature’s choral years precious indeed:
sheets of fine rain in the sun
a burnished leaf falling
from ancient oak
the devil’s wife busy with insects.

Her memories of youth & hardship
are ever clear as a bobwhite’s whistle
as humorous as the echo of
a mockingbird’s song as the sun goes down,
as refreshing as the falling morning dew
in the midst of drought.

What heart forgets
those sacrifices made
the steered course that freed me
from the racial slights and clutches
that bound her inevitably
to the back porches & kitchens of other folk,
to the cold cotton fields & scrub boards.

But her suffering has not been unto death.
Her ship’s spirit still advances
as the grave draws nigh.

Forgiven but not forgotten
the horrid years of backbreaking sweat
planting, chopping, harvesting
—no Xmas of gifts
for five daughters against
the bogus books of balance due.

Joy & understanding
not all lost
in this cruel & treacherous stratagem
of hate and humiliation.

In this white ugliness of poverty and neglect
courage and endurance
marked the days & times of a new accounting.

There is no resignation
—neither pity nor pardon.

The devil has not won the day.

fall 2002