The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005

An Improbable Mecca

8 an imProbable mecca I am here n the house of my chldhood, my youth, of the quet and whsperngs from walls that have watched me lose my two front teeth to a cousn slngng a baby doll, walls that have recorded the saltatory eruptons n the lvng room floor where the whole of us learned the premedtated Manhattan and the snap and flare of the bossa nova, the twst, here n ths house where quet ruled lke an avengng sant even when I rolled, drunk and drty, n the lvng room at seventeen, home from college wth hoodlum frends, n the year of the Black Quartet. Ths house opens ts eyes, reaches to me wth hands held together n slent prayer, beggng me to take every lesson and go on wth lfe peacefully, out of ts contemplaton, out of the lves t has absorbed, out of my father’s ponderng step, comng home n the evenngs n hs brown, leather bomber jacket, ecclesastcal and provdent, out of my mother’s dscordant sngng as she put yellow rbbons n my nvald grandmother’s har, sngng old sprtuals removed from new hymn books, always 9 fallng back to her favorte, “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savor.” Her humble cry resounds n the tny mnd of my ear when I slde my hands down the walls as I ease down the stars of ths house where mother and grandmother ded, where the bones of ths home screamed untl they were thn as glass when I lost my mnd. Ths house throws back ts head and laughs n a resplendent roar when I ask t to remember the first poem I wrote at eght, the Sears & Roebuck bcycle wth whtewalls and headlghts, the first grlfrend n the fourth grade, the first wfe at nneteen, the long hours of studyng, the lectures on ancestry from Grandma, the delcate cloth of talkng and sharng I bult wth my father as we became the next two on the prophetc end of the pew, the anxous, sleepless nghts whle we lstened to Besse fryng the chcken for the trp down-home, south to Vrgna, back to the embracng roots that made us beleve unfalterngly that we were truly wealthy, the pous Sunday mornngs when I marched off to the Baptst church quet and measured lke the Methodsts and Lutherans, 10 wth my usher’s badge and my belef. Ths house stands before me and n my memory, a monument perfectly algned to the stars, lumnescent and sentent, a lfe n and of tself and ourselves, as patent and knd and sufferng as anyone could ever hope a house to be when chatterng chldren kck n ts lap, men le n t, tryng to accommodate ther future, when women pant t wth song from the old world of patrarchal law, when death comes lustng after t wth sledgehammers and stllness— I come to the front steps and st as I dd when I was a chld and hope that I can hold to ths through lfe’s celebratons and calamtes, untl I go shootng back nto the darkness of my orgn n some nvsble speck n an ndetermnable brck of ths house, ths rememberng. ...