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^