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Thoughts while rebuilding

Rosa wrote this poem after a day of ministry working to tear out and rebuild the floor of Sylvester and Maria’s home.  

21635 (the title of this poem)

I have wood dust, everywhere
I hear the roaring of many tools in the back ground
As I wait for instructions I look down at the rubble that used to be a supporting floor
I find two hair beads
I imagine Maria doing the girl’s hair in many skinny braids and putting these beads on the end
In my head everything disintegrates
Piece by piece it all falls out of itself like this home that is now a trailer
 
I picture the kids running around on what used to be a floor playing tag
How the rubble that used to be the walls held their laughs and cries
How the water held it’s spot for days like I ain’t goin no where
And Sylvester and Maria held their kids because they are all that really mattered anyway
 
In this house that has given way to the elements
How it must open it’s self up for us to fix it
To tare it’s insides out and start almost new
How these hands can actually build a house and not just doodle
Not just destroy
Not just hit
How these hands can build walls that aren’t to bottle up but to protect
 
How some of the scraps are almost usable
How all the rotten things do not matter
How all the water does not matter
How the kitchen table hanging from a tree is no longer a kitchen table but just a table
How Estelle and Alice’s beads are no longer their beads but just beads
And it’s just rubble
Just wood
Just a heater
Just a trailer
How these hands and their donations and our time may make it a house but only Sylvester Maria and their son and daughters make it a home
 
Rosa Lloyd
Group: Ignite
Southeast Missouri state university

 

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