Better Home

He set his banjo on a peach crate,
picked up a mason jar,
tore himself off a slash and said,
“Sing for me, Vera.”
Her voice wavered like a robin’s song,
high and clear across the smoke-filled room
and everybody drew still as Grandma sang gospel.

“I was standing, by my window,
on one cold and cloudy day”

Grandaddy’s fingers skipped across the banjo strings
like Mama through a Carolina cotton field,
bare feet kicking clods of red dirt
while her patchwork dress
snagged on branches,
snatchin’ notes out of the air like
Grandma’s song floating through the kitchen
while she fixed collards for Sunday dinner.

“Will the circle be unbroken,
By and by, Lord, by and by.”

The whiskey stole his fingers,
hard living and twelve children stilled her voice.
There was no music in them
by the time I came along,
but every once in a while,
when I played freeze tag with my cousins
in the back yard and hid behind the laundry
hanging out in the sun to dry,
a bird would carry back a hint of melody,
and I could hear the song
in Grandma’s eyes as she stood at the sink
washing dishes
and watching the kids play in the yard.

“There’s a better home a-waiting,
in the sky, lord, in the sky.”