Pelican Tracks

Black Baptist Funeral

 Black Baptist Funeral in memory of Lelia Green We’ve come early, in late morning, To Doyle’s Funeral Home on Fourth Street in Slidell, No preacher yet behind the chapel podium, No hands trembling over the piano keys, only a box Flanked with flowers, the lid open, and her face Still freckled under the undertaker’s dust, A sleepy smile played out in the calm of the casket. Soon the bare pews buzz with babies, small boys In the aisles, restless as the dresses of women Bright with big blooms, and big hats Crisp and beribboned, in cool colors, Straw brims slanting down the brow, more like A cakewalk than a Wake and Dismissal. The programs, laid out with their order of events And verses and supporting cast, we all use To push the air around, the air that hangs From the heavy Processional of family loss To the Viewing of Remains when her service ends. Blood runnin’ home in the veins, The reverend says, in a rustle of linen and amens, And now Sister Green been called home. And it’s a long way from Amite, Louisiana, To death, a trail winding through the pine woods And the cottonmouth waters of the swamp, Through two days a week of sweeping and mopping, One eye on the steam iron, the other on the soaps, Wisp of a cigarette drifting over The aroma of red beans seasoning on the stove, Salt meat and sausage, a hot loaf of po-boy bread,  And Lelia laughing at all our jokes, her lips Held tight around the secrets we tell her, those petty sins We’ve learned to keep back from our parents . . . And after the prayers and eulogies, a solo hymn I’ve never heard before, having been raised On Latin sacraments and the chanting of monks, Though I know the holy waxwork of Professor Longhair, His left hand the mallet of the Caribes, his right A tipsy tightrope over an alley of broken bottles, Every note falling somewhere between The fishfries of Friday night and the funerals of Monday morning. Out under the sun, we’re with her in our Dodge Spirit That tails the slow cortege, a shining line of Cousins and nephews, aunts and a lone daughter, The Cleveland sisters she rode a dog night and day to see, Squeezed in a narrow bus seat; and for once The cops hold back the world to let her pass— Red lights mean nothing to the dead. When my mother died, in a spring already past The last blush of azaleas, the wind blowing Through shanks of cemetery grass cut down Within an inch of their lives, we brought Lelia up To sit beside us in the shade of the canopy, hers The one black face among the mourners there, For the blessing and the mute baffles of goodbye. Just off the Dixie Ranch Road, where her house Stood framed forty years under the oaks, we turn Down a dirt track so cramped the cars must park Halfway in the ditch, wet ruts of a lane Winding deep in the country where no one goes Except to dump their trash or bury the dead In the homemade graveyard of the Greens, The mud scooped out with a backhoe, and everyone  Swabbing the sweat of early August, waiting On those pallbearers built like linemen for the Saints, Suits bunched up over muscle, dark stains under the arms As they slide her body from the hearse, the crowd Closing in to hear the preacher’s brief about What lies here, and what lies ahead, and what lies . . . Words of heaven float over the broken stones, The crosses leaning in the weeds, and mean No more than a promise of clouds that might Bring a moment’s peace to this raw plot, before The long parade of the living steps back From the grief and the heat and the hollow ground. ...