Currently Reading Square Foot Gardening By Mel Bartholomew see related

See, I told you I was not a consitant Journaler!  What?  I didn't tell you?  Well, I'm telling you now, I start a journal then don't keep up with it and lots of things happen and I feel guilty for not writing about them and think I should just blow of my journal instead of admitting that I am not a constitant journaler.  Because that would be like admitting that I was less than perfect or somehow at fault and I wouldn't want to do that.  But I wrote a thing a poem maybe and I wanted to post it so that was a good enough reason to come back.  So here it is--this thing I wrote:

The stair is bare

and worn

What is that line

on the wall?

That is the mark

left by the flood

waters of Betsy

She came and left

her mark

And it remains

im my life

Time has passed

Too many years

Why not change

the Wallpaper?

The house still

remembers the tears

of the new slaves

fresh off the

auction block

down the street.

What is this place?

Why can't I leave here?

My family all gone away

There is no way, No Way

I will survive here

in a house that still

cries with my tears.

Maybe I should name it.  How about "weeping stair" or "weeping house"  or not.  What do you think?

I wrote this while in a class that was blending jazz music with Langston Hughes poetry and the Bible.  We were given a time to listen to Miles Davis and write and this is what came out just as you see it here, unedited.  This writing, like the class, came from a blend of a lot of things: items up for discussion in class, the title of the class "A way out of no way", and a supernatural experience that I had in a real house in New Orleans when I lived there in 1981.  My husband and I lived in a small apartment on the third floor of a house that is now over 200 years old.  The house was origianlly used as a holding and training place for slaves as they were brought in from the river which was 14 blocks away.  I don't know who owns the house now that our former landlady has died but at the time, it was owned by a decendent of the orginal owner.  The first time we entered the building, we noticed that half way up the second floor the wallpaper changed.  There was a distinct line, below was dark and soiled and above was brighter and cleaner.  So the natural question arose.  What happened?  She merely replied "Betsy".  My first thought was disbelief, why would anyone keep the same damaged wallpaper around for over thirty years?  The next thought was that was some seriously deep flood water.

You have no doubt read this far to learn about the supernatural event.  Actually there were many in that house but I will only recount one as it pertains to this poem.  One afternoon, (or was it morning?) I was home alone except for the child still residing in my body when I heard someone crying.  Not ordinary crying, but crying like the worst thing that could possibly happen had indeed happened...sobbing violently.  I was startled by the sound that seemed to be coming from right outside my door, so much so that I was hesitant to investigate.  But the sound of fear...or was it sorrow, it must be both...caused my compassion to overcome my fear.  There was someone who desparately needed another human being for just what I didn't know but I felt that I had to try to help so I opened the door. The hall was empty.  I know how sound carries, it's probably drifing up from the second floor, so I went to the second floor and the second floor hall was empty but the weeping continued just as loud and just intense as when I first heard it.  So I continued to the first floor and the first floor hall was also empty.  Well, it must be someone, inside their apartment crying over a death or in fear of an abusive husband.  My curiosity got the better of me and I listend at each door to see where the distraught person might be residing, if I find the door, should I knock?  But as I traversed the entire building the sound of weeping was equally loud and intense everywhere, eminating from the  very fibers of the house itself, from the flood stained wallpaper from the cypress banister, from the shadows under the stairs.  Was that a blood stain in the poorly lit hallway?

So I went back upstairs and turned on the TV.

Reading back over the poem, I see some things that float through my head from time to time have spilled out on the paper but may still be hidden.  I see those who are touched by Christ and healed but are reluctant to leave the trappings of sin or infirminity behind.  The majestic house survivied hurricaine Betsy, at least one fire and now hurricaines Katrina and Rita and yet it still sits there with the same old damaged wallpaper.  The tears of the slaves will remain with the house even when the tenants move on to bigger and better apartments.  The spirit of the weeping slave or slaves are forever trapped rather than going on to heaven.  They stay to wallow in their misery for eternity.  How much does that mirror all of our lives.  We plead to God to be freed from the sin that enslaves us and the Scripture tells us that we need only accept the forgiveness that is already there for us and yet we sit year after year in our stained and dirty wallpaper. From an Eagles song: "So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key."  From Life of Brian a healthy man is seen begging he says "alms for an old ex-lepper"  He has been healed by Jesus but only knows how to beg so he continues with his old familiar way of life rather than going on to live a full life of a healthy man.  Then toward the end, there are two ways to read the last few lines.  "There is no way, NO Way I will survive here in a house..." or "There is no way, NO Way... (new sentence wtih determination) I WILL SURVIVE here in a house...  How you read it depends upon your wallpaper.