Crossing the Threshold

I am walking
I am not going

my body moves along the way
with patience for the breeze

the morning pallor
lies on the green

the ravens stand
on the light and

the expanse opens
to my feet

*

high pitch and stitching
sound of the jackdaws

a bedding of brown leaves
covering the humus

and in the middle
is a stream

that can hardly be heard
I come up from the round

water with shadows
I did not know

*

I can smell spring rising
from the soft hollow

the stream
hides things

under its mirror
whispers

growths
blood

skin coming
to cover the body

It flows more heavily
in a black bed

leaves Banana Ground
the crack

where home runs
where yam vines settle

on a silent river
through a hill

of steep bones
singing

from all sides
through the woodland

I hear    Damn Head
cow pastures and tomato beds

more loudly
over brown leaves so alive

so alive
the ground is

a black dress falling on a bed
of pure manure

green shoots are out
the ivy floor gives off

murmured laughs
and a bird shoots

through the tangled
thoroughfare

what does the stream in Coffee Grove
feel as it grows near?

*

going deeper now into the
intimate recesses of the trunk

into the zones hidden
from view

but working
to keep me alive

my eye looking at me
from everywhere

and making noises
the forest refusing to

quiet its walking
eyes of the

hillside
in black soil

sounds
in the redness of barks

the dangling of the branches
in the brain of the stream

*

faceless tree whose eyes dip
into muddy tracks

I have space for you in
my blood

within you
shines a flame

travelling under your dress
the sap flowing

in your inner dark
are the words I want

the words
of a classroom of trees

*

three teenagers are young-
ing their lives

on the crest of the hill
highlights of orange

spill
down on

their laughs
the sunset

with a trail of jet smoke
over the clearing

a Black man comes through
a thicket

with his baby    gives the head tilt
to me    yeah bra     

seeing
me see him

here in the woods
the darkness encloses just right

I go towards the tangled arch
not far away

my volumes enter
a cell

In it I hear
the sound of protoplasm

bursting
the green grass

coming back
at my feet

as I walk

*

but what are these woods
anyway?

I do not always understand
what changes inside my head

when the muscle boys with pit bulls
and knives appear

If the city is so hostile then
why would we come here

where nobody would find us
if we were mauled

if we lay bleeding
a densely covered tree would hide us

In here
history keeps following me around

so to be in these woods
is not your idea of being free

but you will keep on
seeing me

*

a sprout of grass
in a root’s crevice

blooms into a pack
of dogs

beware of spring
believe you are

a sprout of grass
and love all you see

but come out of the woods
before the white boys

with pit bulls
come

*

the barks
in winter

solid brown
today are tinted green and

hyacinth
the light darts

with the quickness
of the word

bird

For Those Who Steal Away

 The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) was founded in Philadelphia in 1816. Emmanuel AME Church (Mother Emmanuel) was established when the congregation in Charleston, South Carolina, met in secret until the end of the American Civil War.

In Saint Mary, Jamaica, the ruined building of an AME church can be found at the site of a former sugar plantation, in the dense forest near Kwame Falls. As stated on the plaque on its front wall, its leader was one Mrs F. Aicheson. On the plaque is inscribed the date ‘3rd June ’20’.

The land

We feel blood coming and going
says my guide   in roots
that ruins cover

Our blood is felt
in the underland of spirits

running through slavery and
ports of blood
connecting roots of AME

Philadelphia    Baltimore    New Orleans
Savannah    Charleston

where a white man
opens fire on a Black congregation
killing nine

running through these Saint Mary hills
and the Ebenezer AME
overgrown with bush
souls inside trees

in iron lignum vitae
wind and leaves
keep memory

the sea is right beside us
as well

humming people long dead
and these ruins standing in
time suspended

*

A strong place

Clap of the waves
against the cliffs below
the theme
of the stone’s song
outside the curtain
of woodland

Here on this rocky
hillside where the
underworld temple

stands     land
screams sneakily
inside its stones

Women are born
from rock

with backs
hardly remembered

for the men they carried
in war and rebellion

What happened here?

The moss-blotched guango
says nothing
about the Black understory

Its pioneer Mrs F Aicheson
is covered by ruins
by the lichen mat    by the guango sapling
piercing through the belly
of the sanctuary

*

Dis place: A Song for the AME and Mother Emmanuel

How    Lord

did you teach the soul of the slave
to grow into a tree

the murdered body to burst
out of the ground like cedar

the Mandinka warrior to rise
from the root of lignum vitae?

If Charleston’s souls found new bodies
could they have found them here?

found muscles    breath
hands and arms in these trees?

I listen across time

their hallelujahs
in the lives of wood

the secrets stone
does not silence I listen

Here they have stolen away
A god decided

they should stand
that their arms should wave a memorial

in the land that unburies the dead
They sing

Out of A.M.E. an otaheite grows
a guango rises from the body

of praying mothers

*

Epilogue

Kwame Hills    Saint Mary    Jamaica
sleeping land of spirits

The pathway through the bush
rises rigid and sheer

Succulent lianas
and cocoa leaves pause
as if waiting

The fisherman my guide
walks behind

We’re in a land
of uncurated people

Photograph © Matthew