Avoiding the Spirits

When at sunset the congregation gathers
in the low light of St. Helena’s old gray
Baptist chapel; they guard their hearts
from the whisper of the low-bellied trees;
calling on the blood as they brush off
the dew on their coats by the burial ground.
When they sing, the sound has the flat
simplicity of prayer, a sound that brings
heat to your neck, tears to your eyes
because you can hear in the rugged
rafters, hewn from old-growth trees
at the water’s edge, the voices of all those
people who had nothing but lament
and Jesus to fill the gap of a stolen life.
The sisters can’t make a man cross
that threshold unless he has come
to lay someone to rest or to witness
a child’s blessing or a daughter’s
wedding, for a man can’t hear the flat
voices in the church and not feel
the droop of his shoulders
and the weight of his dangling
empty hands that have too often
hung helpless for prudence’s sake, for good
sense, making him not a man
but an empty shell, a creature
who laughs to stop the shame
of not being able to keep his family
together and safe. No, he will rather
sit in the dark cathedral of the juke
joint and let the blues of sardonic
regret and caustic distance
wash him, make him know that
he is alone on the road, and all