Best of Nan Brooks: Blackbirds Bring A Blessing
Grackle
In 2000 I was hospitalized with serious heart arrythmias that resisted treatment. We tried a new drug that might have worked, but instead it nearly killed me. Thanks to one nurse, I lived; simple and profound as that. The evening after my near death, four women came to bless me. They were the lowest on the hospital hierarchy, the cleaning ladies.
Now, these twenty years later I live in a city where the grackles gather in the trees at certain intersections at twilight. The trees bubble with their chatter like a waterfall in full spring thaw. I think the grackles, those scorned birds, must be talking about their days, passing along crucial information about the city and the silly humans. I love to linger there, listening to the birds, remembering the women in that hospital room and how they, too, managed to share the latest undercover news while they risked all that contamination.
I ask that we all remember the "lowliest" workers; they are the ones who will suffer most in these times and they bless us with their presence as much as with the work they do.
BLESSING AT TWILIGHT
They swoop into the room
on a current of chatter.
They are four, a holy number,
and raucous.
One sweeps aside the bedside curtain.
opens drawers and closet door
to the rhythmic click hiss swish
of antiseptic cleaner
hosed and scrubbed into every surface.
One hums her own tune
as she plucks bits of paper
from the bedside table.
Two dance without a word,
upend the mattress
and dismantle the bed.
Click hiss swish.
Perched high on the wall, the television
bursts on.
The flutter of one hand turns Oprah even louder
so as to cover their own talk
in the language of subterfuge and sanctuary,
the language carried from slavery and
meant for white folks’ lazy ears.
They have something important,
something enraging
to discuss and scold.
I, immobile and intruding,
cannot turn from their graceful dance
their radiant beauty,
their sheer survival.
Struggle is tatooed into each body
missing teeth
broken arches
backs eased briefly by an arch, a twist, a sigh.
They are sturdy of body
in these rooms of
the fragile and dying.
Sturdy of spirit
in this room where sorrow has lived
for too long.
Light halos their majestic heads
nappy curls, braided crowns,
crows’ feet where smiles linger
bodies ample and stiff,
long-limbed and willowy.
Click hiss swish
they clean every joint of the complicated bed
reassemble it
scrub the window sill
air conditioner
chairs
floor
The flock descends
upon my side of the room
suddenly silent until I say
“Ladies, you are a joy
You have been the highlight of my day”
Attempting to bow, hand on my heart,
“I thank you.”
The eldest pauses in mid chore, blinks once,
“Honey, you in trouble!”
Joy of joys, I have made them laugh again.
Linens harvested, trash contained
and bacteria most surely banished,
they restore their laden cart to order
as a woman,
white and sharp edged,
commands the doorway
“What are you all doing together?”
“We just got all nine rooms done in a hour”
the no-answer answer.
Then a fast escape.
I have been blessed by the ancient ritual
My sisters gathering at twilight
to lament and plot
sing and laugh.
Women comforting
and purifying the world.
Nan Brooks
September, 2000
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