Old Rugged Cross, and: Saxophone on Yvonne Dupree's Backyard Fence

Abstract

225 I have to be honest with you, when I first came back and saw the devastation to my church, all that mud, all that foulness, I fell to my knees and wept. I am one of the chosen , my grief piled up like the gut from the houses. I’ve been a minister for forty years, but I lost my faith. I got angry, told God you want it fixed, you fix it. How am I supposed to live? Am I not one of His apostles? My home in ruin and my sanctuary destroyed. Eighty years old and I am offered a job with the city, riding a truck and picking up trash. What had I done to be beaten so? My God had brought me through a lot of hard times, had enabled me to prosper, just to snatch it all away? I was on a crew of Haitians removing flood debris, and they never allowed me to get out of that truck to pick up anything. All day I rode the truck through the wards, seeing the swamp of furniture, swollen Bibles, rusted pistols, color TVs, the big picture; the righteous and the sinners, all get hit with the same blessed hand. Old Rugged Cross Two poems by gary copeland lilley 226 Didn’t I drink a hurricane in a French Quarter bar that didn’t have more than a half foot of water out front? And didn’t I wade through the tourists buying novelty charms in the voodoo shops as I searched for High John the Conqueror Root? Didn’t I watch the Indians march through the dancing exile crowd and the motorcycles parked all down Jackson Street? I cleaned up a vacant lot and gave the police the rusted gun frames and the mudcovered ammo box that was under the only remaining doorstep. Didn’t I see Survivor’s Village outside the projects where they won’t let the folk return? Every soul in a tent waiting word from a personal Moses, black mold spreads like a rash as they pray for their living rooms while politicians pray for condos and casinos and sip the FEMA water. I saw the Mississippi River, and I pulled an old gray house toward the curb after placing the crystal, the wedding silver, the china dinner plates, and a coffee can full of money and insurance documents on a white tablecloth beneath the tarnished saxophone caught in Miss Yvonne’s backyard fence. Saxophone on Yvonne Dupree’s Backyard Fence ...