The Gift

This was after we had buried my father

In the soft earth of the Santa Cruz Valley

That same graveyard on the hill

Where our whole clan

Will eventually be replanted

And we swung dirges in the midday

As the shepherd and his flock

Dealt with my father, they had placed

White flowers around his neck

But oh, when that first dirt dash the casket lid

No amount of ritual can protect you

From that sound when it hits

We lit candles upon the tumulus

Of dirt which lay heavy upon him

Heavier than when I pressed his breastbone in the chapel

While outside, beyond the farmlands, deep in the country

The river continued to run, not knowing

That my father had died

And we waited until he was

Well settled in the dirt before we left

And back at the house I started rapping

With the cousin with the long-long dread

That wrap up in a scroll, the one with the biblical name

The one who say he don't communicate by computer

This was when we were standing at the gate

Ready to leave that house of mourning

This was after the jewel bag get bring out

And my brother and I had to choose which as heirlooms

The silver ring with the raised initials of his name

But he laughed, and he never told me what those letters spelled

When I asked him in 1978

See me walking the yard

Hip in my English waistcoat

Tall in the saddle, like big scissors cutting

And Mama D, Mama D

Who also loved him, and who could tell you the names

Of all his children, even those he forgot

She was saying, "Look, look how you end up where you is"

When things coulda been so different

Well, as all them prayers and benediction

Your people put on you

Coming down through generation

The hope was you

Is the asafetida that the old lady burn

All the pray she pay, till her knees burst open

And all those orisons must have conjured some power

Till her love became a chant to kill death

A fetish to protect you on this journey

We may live and die, but what is between is ours to keep

She gave what she had