Gleaned In the Smokey Mountains
^b^
Gleaned in the Smokey Mountains
A splash of white paint, just where you sleep
that's what the Wise-blood Naomi advised.
I remember her hair so thin it looked
like ham gravy running down her forehead.
"No need for Passover blood. Not here.
Not in these hills. Here,
The spirits have a diferent master."
Dutifully, we obeyed yet
that night, just before the gloaming,
blood dripped from above.
Atomized droplets misting from the ceiling,
evincing a hidden chamber above?
My elders gathered us
in a hush,
we could not know
to what or whom to pray
Lighting through now morning mist
We hastened for the bright of day.
See, childhood holds such unbalanced dreams
My parents gone; no trace of any shaman.
Still, inscribed in me ever lies
A shuddering before things unseen
perhaps obscene
Things I sense are never
To be gleaned.
Grain may be gleaned as
In that painting by Millet;
Barbizon School, yet how
Was I to learn to distinguish seed from bract
Matthew from Ruth separate
As I am in an different century
on a different continent?
Am I to walk as Odysseus to a land which
Knows not of sea.
Have them mistake my oar
for winnowing fan?
Can things ever be what they seem?
I see them still and know
They are not there; yet,
Formed amid blood-spray and youth
it remains difficult
To suss the saved from the damned
the seen from unseen since
Witching was my midwife...
^b^
Copyright © R. H. White | Year Posted 2019
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