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She
for
Katie Latimore’s Birthday, 101
By Glenis Redmond Staring into Katie
Latimore’s eyes
I go straight into
heaven,
rest in a blueness not
here on earth.
With her I feel a
certain mercy
I have never known.
She who grew hollyhocks,
hibiscus, hydrangeas
and drew every stray cat
in the county.
She who when not pickin’
cotton,
grew vegetables in her
yard,
fished in her spare
time.
Rachel’s daughter,
her mother born a slave
bore sixteen children.
She in those desperate
dangerous times
held aspirations beyond
the third grade
but never made it to
that one-room schoolhouse.
Her knowledge was of
another understanding,
a candle lit by the
Almighty.
When I am wise I sit
there and study her blue flame.
She smoked her Winston
100’s
inhaled a little
letting the ash grow
until it fell like
withered dreams beneath her feet.
She drank her Coca-Cola
like medicine
loved her potatoes
sweet.
She made me thru my
mother
thru and thru ‘til
I am what I am
which is why even now,
I have a penchant for
all things old;
never been particular
about the new.
It is why I gave birth
to two incredibly old women.
I called them the
Delaney sisters.
They came that way.
It is their spirit not
their age.
She, my mother’s mother,
I am not calling a saint
but is there anybody
living who would want to walk in her shoes?
She has earned the glory
of these words
any respite they might
bring.
She with her jet black
ambition
tied to her hands
her running feet
running thru cane
fields,
cotton fields
always somebody else’s
sharecropped land.
She deserves to run,
fight, do battle no
more.
Lay it all down by the
riverside.
But she is in the
nursing home
with a fire, a rage
burning bright.
I know because
sometimes,
she won’t let no white
hand touch her.
When I leave there, She
whispers,
“Loves everybody,
Chile,
no matter how black,
how blue,
how brown,
or how white,
loves everybody.”
For in those times
she was running water
clear, clean in that
ingrown South
where revolution never
happened
not even now.
She was
IS the point of my
inspiration
showing me the
revolution
is in staying alive.
I don’t know what
happened to her
101 years of living in
the south.
I only know
She is closer to God
than anyone I have ever
known.
Coming from a shattered
past
imagine heartache after
heartache,
outlasting the death of
almost everyone,
lasting 101 years of
living.
What are we gonna say
to that black woman?
We gonna look around
pretend she not there?
What we gonna say to 101
years
of having no monuments
erected in her name?
The only thing
resurrected daily was the struggle and the fight.
What we gonna say to all
those years of living?
If we want to be well,
we sit down and listen
with more than our ears.
* * * *
* posted 19 June 2006 |
