PASTOR JEDIDIAH
“I see lives being destroyed, and I don’t know
what to do….
I lay in my bed and my heart beats so heavy for
the city,
that it drives me to tears.”
—Jedidiah
Brown*
Chosen one at the storefront church. Bodies pile in alleys and empty
lots, daily death,
weekly carnage in Chicago, South Side redder and meaner than drug
dealer dens.
Your roots, Jedidiah: hoods
engraved in your brain, your soul, childhood friends, first loves and all.
Chosen one, picked when you were twig-legged, manchild with 13 years
and another name,
the old woman prophet drawing you aside, sent by God to tell you—you just a poor Black kid with
Bibles—to tell you God has marked you for His work.
Like the fisher of men, you cast wide nets, swept homeless into your
home, beaten mothers,
runaways with spirits long snuffed. You ministered with love more
than Bibles, fed, mentored,
struggled to make them feel human again.
Chosen one who forgot to take care of yourself—
outsize dreams born of firsthand pain, warrior heart girded
to bind daily loss, to soothe armies of demons devouring your town.
When you salve wounds, quench fires and give hope to people looking
for peace,
there’s not enough of you to go around.
You’ve set down the gun pressed to your temple, silenced sobs that
wracked you when you
drove to the lake. We all heard you, Jedidiah, heard you clear that
heavy day, heard your
heartbreak for your failures to save lives. Saw crowds ‘round your
car, cops begging you,
on their knees, some sobbing. They knew you, Jedidiah, vigils on
burning streets, bullhorn
and open hands.
How hard justice is to find, peace to pin down, love to spread!
How hard it is, how hard, to fight day and night,
to slice open your heart to wounds of our brothers,
to rise with the sun, day after day, when others are flat on the
ground.
__________________________
Inspired
by “So Jedidiah Brown Gave All of Himself to the City He Loved: A New
Generation of
Black
Leaders Confronts the Anguish of Activism,” by Ben Austen. Highline: Huffington Post, 9.28.17.
Originally
published in a prior version in Thelma Reyna’s book, Reading Tea Leaves
After Trump
(Golden
Foothills Press: 2018).
REPLAY
Press your ear on the child’s chest—
he’s five and in distress—his heart
fluttering
like a wounded bird’s,
quivering
in little pearl taps you’ll barely feel.
Hold
his hand, just twigs chilled
and
quaking, fingers in a ball so hard,
nails
digging into flesh, so pull the little sticks
apart
so you can place his palm in yours.
Look
deeply in the child’s unblinking eyes,
so
wide, orbs frozen, tears layered clear,
shimmering,
stopped, unflowing,
the
whites like ice on coal.
Lay
your ear near his mouth and hear
his
rasping breath stutter like a dying man’s,
uncurl
his body from the kitchen floor
and
hold him in your lap, hold him close, and warm.
Don’t
talk to him, for he won’t hear.
Don’t
raise him up, for he won’t rise.
His
eyes are glued to his daddy on the rug,
the
pool of red spreading dark and fast.
He’s
starting school next week, this little boy,
and his
dad took off the day to walk him there.
Uncurled,
sitting in your lap, his head
tilted
to his father, the child’s in distress.
Don’t
speak to him, for he can’t hear.
Don’t
stand him up, for he can’t stand.
His
pencil legs quiver on yours, his silent lips
wet now
because his tears unplugged themselves.
In the
other corner, on the floor, the cop bawls
like a
man condemned, his pistol on the chair,
his red
face bobbing in his trembling hands,
as
clueless now as when his holster freed his gun.
Tonight
the screens will flash the dead man
in his
uniform, and tell how he went deaf
in war,
and how he saw his window break and summoned
help, and how all hell broke loose.
______________
Originally published in the author’s
book, Reading Tea Leaves After
Trump (Golden Foothills Press: 2018).
