Wisteria: Swamp Country

Still Born

28 Still Born Take my baby home, Take my baby home, I ain’t free,and never will be, Take my baby home. i still count them, feeling them like ghost limbs. they have their place in my collection of years. remembering them is a way to remember to count the pressure pills, the heart pills, the blood pills, the tyranny of pills. i count those who died before they woke, those i cradled, caressed, cocooned to life, hoping beyond the weakness of their cries. they died, too, leaving us with tough questions for God almighty. Old Black folk have buried so many babies in the bush behind the cotton groves, with the naked form of cotton bales, standing like sentinel crucifixes against the stale blue of summer skies. Oh,Glory, Oh,Glory. There is room enough In Paradise To have a home. 29 and mother gathers her body and the tears, and builds new fires, cooks new meals, readies her womb to replenish its rooted self to make more brothers, sisters like second nature. she carries her moaning deep in her skin, a way to count the days. My mother bore nine children— we chant this as a litany of her strength. three did not live to see the second year of her wash-belly, wash-soul, wash-body, the thin film of her drying birth waters, scraped off with a rough cloth as they laid her out to rest. Sometimes I feel Like a motherless child, A long way from home, A long way from home. ...