GENESIS
for mom and dad
By Janice Liddell
I
In the beginning
a sharecropper’s daughter
sits on the crowded
hard hand-hewn
pew board
never noticing the
stiff faced brown boy's
side-wise stare.
The boney fingers that
hold the hymnal for them to share
belonged to town-hands
she says to herself
and claims she could never stand
the pima cotton softness of brown town-hands.
Beneath the doxology chorused flat and off-key
he whispers his name is Lee
would she like to walk down
to the fig tree
by the churchyard edge?
He's quietly confident with his
"Who might you be?"
"Euneda," she scarcely breathes.
He gives her an answer
for no query asked,
"Yes, I think I-need-her."
She laughs
with the young man
with brown town-hands.
II
Three generations now,
trek slowly back
to this country place
where they met
so long ago.
The steeple rests now
on cool delta earth.
We stand in the consecrated muteness;
someone photographs the sad pile
of weathered wood,
their genesis,
their own private
In the beginning.
III
Romance melts in
the stark heat of this day;
We, distant generations, watch
the pilgrimage
with further distanced interest.
The Mississippi sun sears
our hatless northern heads.
A little one
seeks shade in the over-run churchyard,
leans against a time-beaten headstone
and enjoys its chill;
he reads
a date, a long time passed;
a name, the same as his.
He sits in our history,
unwritten except on marble slabs
He is in our history
We are in our history
Our own private
in the beginning.
for mom and dad
By Janice Liddell
I
In the beginning
a sharecropper’s daughter
sits on the crowded
hard hand-hewn
pew board
never noticing the
stiff faced brown boy's
side-wise stare.
The boney fingers that
hold the hymnal for them to share
belonged to town-hands
she says to herself
and claims she could never stand
the pima cotton softness of brown town-hands.
Beneath the doxology chorused flat and off-key
he whispers his name is Lee
would she like to walk down
to the fig tree
by the churchyard edge?
He's quietly confident with his
"Who might you be?"
"Euneda," she scarcely breathes.
He gives her an answer
for no query asked,
"Yes, I think I-need-her."
She laughs
with the young man
with brown town-hands.
II
Three generations now,
trek slowly back
to this country place
where they met
so long ago.
The steeple rests now
on cool delta earth.
We stand in the consecrated muteness;
someone photographs the sad pile
of weathered wood,
their genesis,
their own private
In the beginning.
III
Romance melts in
the stark heat of this day;
We, distant generations, watch
the pilgrimage
with further distanced interest.
The Mississippi sun sears
our hatless northern heads.
A little one
seeks shade in the over-run churchyard,
leans against a time-beaten headstone
and enjoys its chill;
he reads
a date, a long time passed;
a name, the same as his.
He sits in our history,
unwritten except on marble slabs
He is in our history
We are in our history
Our own private
in the beginning.
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