The church bells said goodbye and waved
the way an old man once shook out his hanky
to wipe the tears from the cheek of his bride,
my mother, her mother and every mother
who has borne a body of water that went

nowhere and stank brighter than the halos
of angels. My wife Regina came to understand.
She is the single sweetness I have tasted
and not turned bitter from, the tasting, fell
as a meteorite onto the string of the guitar

a Creole man with four fingers played.
His eyes were closed. He didn’t know I was there.
He didn’t know his harmonies sizzled in dry grass,
but he halted just the same and sipped an oyster
clean from its shell down to the gullet.

Later, a six-foot snake slipped into the graveyard
at my grandfather’s funeral, climbed a tree, wound
its body around a branch and ate robin eggs
out of the nest, one at a time. It might have been
that guitar player. The eggs probably tasted

of freshwater oysters, and Perry’s church choir
sang about a shopkeeper who never dies,
who only counts his stock and dusts
his shelves and waits patiently for the time
of burning grace to descend.

Their music scattered like seed. I listened
to the distant barge traffic curdle and knew
I could never leave home, even if I wanted to.
Regina and I watched that minister
bury my grandfather at our feet

4

  

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