Grandpa Blues for Grandma & Me

Grandpa Blues for Grandma & Me  
   
Deserted gas station
In pitch black cloak
Of an African American gentleman
Ambling down the street
Our guardian seraph
On this blue avenue
Where parishioners of the church congregate
And a New Jerusalem waits
The man ushers us down the aisle
What is your name I ask?
“Richard, too many people know me
Where I died in Paris
But here hardly anyone knows me.
I prefer the anonymity of my hometown.”
And the memory of a lonely sign
By the bluffs that honors the Native Son
Of literary Natchez haunts me
As I blink and he is gone.

Here the Yuletide Theater of the Soul
Is a greybeard guiding his flock  
Of children  
In the old ways  
Of their ancestors  
We sit in rapt silence  
Like doves in a blackbird forest  
The blues music is soul deep  
Like the mud of Ole Man River  
Grandpa dredged during the depression  
For the Corps of engineers  
A young man in his suit of dreams  
Lost in a confederacy of fools  
Only to awaken in the Hood  
In his good luck eighties  
When the closing act of this play  
Finds an old friend  
From the tire plant where they toiled  
Shoulder to shoulder  
After civil rights gifted Granddad  
This brother  
They hold hands like apostles  
From a church that knows no color  
Colorblind in a moment  
Of brotherly love  
Invitation to sip iced tea  
On man’s country porch  
Grandfather grateful  
For this archangel Gabriel  
Who will meet him  
On the red dirt road  
To the heavenly bistro  
Where Satchmo blows an angel trumpet  
For newcomers on the block of love