| Dreading Distrust & Reparations
Struck by lightning (probably), a dead pine
that’s been falling for
the last three months
held up by limbs of live
trees finally hit the
ground, today. I wasn’t
there to witness the
event when it happened,
regrettably. I had
more uneventful matters
in mind, like fixing
the roof of a
forty-year-old storehouse in
much disrepair for
decades, though it has
been used to store
furniture, records, tools
books—covered in mildew,
mold, & dirt.
Rain & rodents & ants
have had a day or
so gnawing away daddy’s
carpentry that
he left for us in 1970.
The floor & walls
are in as worst shape as
the roof. Why I
took on this costly &
extended project
is as mysterious &
doubtless as idiotic as
murderous bombs falling
from the sky in
distant Lebanon. Maybe
we’re preparing
for an ominous future,
when birds don’t
sing, a greater bloody
war in which much
more will be lost than
unhealthy inflated
egos. Our sentiments of
a Warsaw ghetto
past won’t be undone,
nor our eternally
repairing what cannot be really repaired.
24 July 2006
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Reparations along the Nottoway
By Rudolph Lewis
In this dark, damp
forest, sounds of tree
frogs & insects still
rule the night.
Along
the bend of Nottoway—river of Nadowa
a people whose banner
was burned over
three centuries
ago—arrowheads can still
be found at Stony Creek
where ancestor
clan Cheroenhaka
mothers used to camp.
Today, a fawn was
bounding through a
field of soybeans
hearing the roar of my
engine. Few hands are
needed these days
to till the soil when
machines are quicker
than black fingers &
stronger than black
backs. The Snakes,
hunters, resisted the
feminizing of both
farming & Christians.
In these woods the tarred roads we travel
now didn’t exist when I
was a boy. There
was not even dirt roads
when Mama was
a girl here at
Jerusalem. Then there were
wagon trails & horse
paths on which she
rode Duke bareback miles
for a doctor’s
office up in Jarratt.
Her father owned 75
acres
of this forest then. The children of
slaves
left these woods for urban centers
long
after the Snake people lost the skies
to
their conquerors. Scattered over seven
states
& Canada, they’ll returning today
gathering to reclaim bloodlines—what’s
been lost in ledgers & museums. Can
we
be repaired seeking
bones, ancient spirits
wandering among cypress, oaks & pines?
26 July 2006
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Reparations as an Artful Enterprise
By Rudolph Lewis
I’ve almost gotten all
the boards nailed down
on the storehouse
roof—an enterprise started
as one of collaboration
& cooperation like all
beginnings on the shores
of discovery. Now I
go it alone. There’s
always an injury in body
soul or spirit—some
excuse, treaty violation
when peoples have
different ways of going
about reaching a goal.
Some dream of being
drivers, of pushing
those below through the
heat & cold until the
harvest is done. Some
tasks like carpentry
require more measuring
& thought than dropping
seeds in the tilled
soil, holding the
handles of a plow, walking
or riding a machine.
Repairing or restoring
is a more delicate
matter. It depends less on
the richness of the soil
or temper of weather.
It requires a vision of
something lasting far
beyond one’s self, the aching of one’s belly.
26 July 2006
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Divine Reparations Are
Eternal
By Rudolph Lewis
Summer is at its fullest. Our
garden gave
& continues in its bounty:
snaps, tomatoes
corn, spinach, kale, cabbages,
butter beans.
August revival
approaches—bombs still
fall. There is a market in
winding sheets
for Gaza babies; people are on
the move.
Today’s sultry stillness with
its shadows
dry & scorching created a
night without
moon or stars. Insects are a
feast for bats.
We have our moments when
Nature is at
her gentlest: a sun golden
peeps through
the pines; soft breezes caress
my cheek.
Can a soul ask for more with
this spring
like respite: white bell
flowers with red
centers blooming on the lawn?
The birds
perched on their limbs are
silently in awe
as tree frogs cry for rain in
the rustling of
green leaves—a bloody mosquito
& gnats
cannot spoil this wondrous
cool evening.
28 July
2006
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To Hell with Blackness & Nationalism
By Rudolph Lewis
In this green forest of
winding country roads
there are seldom two
beams of car lights to
break in on the silent
peace of insect songs
& the darkness of
moonless, humid nights.
If not too insufferable
I sit on the screened
porch, across from the
cemetery, & listen
for God’s voice to speak
as my ancestor.
Always skeptical, I’m
sure I’d ask, “What
did you say?” I suffer
like many deafness.
In a world filled with
horrors, kidnapping
& other crimes—the
clanging sickness of
terror & death I find it
difficult to measure
what is truth. Daily, I
go about my simple
tasks. Today, I shelled
butter beans for a
few hours. Tomorrow, I
return to roofing
my father’s storehouse.
Now & then I try
to read a few pages in a
scholarly book
on the efficacy of
blackness. As always
I raise questions. Who
is it that speaks
to me across time &
space? Is this God
or Satan? I sink another nail in tar paper.
31 July 2006
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