Buster Peacock & The House of Many Colors
When the city of Freeville
widened the highway,
they didn’t plow down
a single shingle in
Foxcroft
White Pointe
Golf Crossing.
Instead, they took
Buster Peacock’s land.
A blind old black man
in a felt blue hat
with a sagging shack
on twenty acres of
scrub pine and sand.
That house was old
even in Jim Crow’s day
when Buster carried
his sweet Veleetha
over the threshhold,
felt the angles of her face
the curve of her hips,
a perfect place for babies:
Buster Jr.
Scoochie
Little Toot.
Buster Peacock could feel the color
of four rooms with his fingers, the tips
of his toes—the brown creak and sigh
from tired floorboards at night.
The way the feather bed felt
like cool water blue when
the breeze blew gauze curtains
over Veleetha’s sleeping face.
That little red place in the doorway
where Scoochie bumped his head
when he got so tall, the gold notches
where Buster Jr. carved his name,
the yellow dip in the hallway where
Toot liked to slide in socks.
The silver click of the cuckoo clock
exactly eight steps from a gray hum
from the refrigerator, the green smell
of the breadbox on a hot June day.
The city could not understand
why Buster cried so hard
over a broke down shack.
They gave fair market value.
But they didn’t care that
you can’t place market value
on a breadbox or children
grown or a wife passed on.
The day they moved him
to a retirement home,
the dozer crushed
through his front door.
Buster could feel color
all over again.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Waiting For Mother
Waiting for mother was easier
before autumn crackled in
and ate the days up early.
It was my job to never cry
and light the living room fire.
I was six and alone with wood
and the sharp clear bark of cold.
The wind tip-tapped
the spider crack windows
looking for a place inside
to build its nest.
I knew Mother would come,
she would come home and see
me in the big of the dark,
clumsy with wood and the room
closing its teeth around me--
the naughty buds of fire
refusing to open and grow.
The room smiled pumpkin warm
when I coaxed the fire to raise
its broken, bloody wings.
The branches fluttered shadows
like long lashes on the walls.
Those nights were yellow glad;
I could play and wait, listen
to the purr of wind against the sky.
I liked to watch the moon
scrape across the window.
I liked to tell stories to my dolls,
hold them close to the fire,
watch their smiling faces melt.
And the moon held me.
And the smoke held me.
And the long curly hair
of the shadows held me.
And the moon made me full.
And the fire ate my fever.
And the rise and fall of flames
sang me softly to sleep.
Sometimes when I woke,
the fire left burning sores
on tangled legs of branches.
Sometimes when I woke,
the moon rattled at the window.
The cold was thorny
up and down my back.
The knots in the wood
stared like bad baby eyes,
and the clock was click click
clicking its high heels
in the crying midnight room.
I knew when Mother came home,
she would come, singing red shoes,
the pretty side of her face
an orange fire glow.
She would turn off the bad baby eyes
and the meanness of the moon.
She would listen to the falling leaves
and hear the angel wings with me.
She would fall asleep, and I
would rub her small, soft feet.
I would smell her lemon hair.
I would find her missing slipper.
I would kiss her warming temple,
never ever burn.
Waiting for Mother was easier
before the greedy winter came
and chewed up all the wood.
One night, the wind slapped hard.
I only found the skinny twigs.
One night, through the click of cold,
I filled the fireplace with dolls
and books, pennies, chairs,
stale dry blankets,
And I let the room catch on fire.
Upstairs, on my mattress,
I waited for Mother
to creep up the wooden steps
and tuck me in.
She would come quickly.
She would come warmly.
I knew she would come home
and I would not be alone.
And together we would listen
to the broken goodnight moon,
the glowing wind, and babies
falling from the sky.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
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