“Are you, are you, coming to the tree. Strange things did happen here.
No stranger would it be. If we met at midnight in the hanging tree.”
Strange things did happen at the tree The tree of life as it be, unwillingly supported countless deaths with its’ precious limbs Limbs stretched wide and high praying to the sky,
“Stop the senseless killings. Cease the lynching My legs are not beds for the dead to rest its’ head My arms are not swings for rocking tortured souls to eternal sleep”
I feel a connection to the tree, after all my ancestors and the tree were very close Their tears seeped thru soil and watered its’ roots like rain, and they sang ol’ negro spirituals underneath the tree I can hear my kin laughter, cries and screams in the ruffle of the leaves
pic by Harry Snowden
It’s my family tree, literally On this branch, they whipped my daddy They took 25 lashes to his back for sassing back at the massa Right there, they raped my mother, many a time to instill fear in the other slaves and keep’em in line And this, this is where they hung my nephew The two boys say they learned it from their grandpa When asked, “Why?”, they replied, “It’s the thing to do.”
My nephew was only two
“Are you, are you, coming to the tree. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be. If we met at midnight in the hanging tree”
Where dead man called out for his love to flee”
My nightmares play to the theme song of my grand dad singing
“Run boy, flee.
Run little boy, be free Run, don’t walk, boy, flee.
Run faster my boy, be free”
They say history repeats itself Full circle as in a carousel Am I gonna endure the same kind of hell? Is the family tree my destiny?
© 2016 D.L. DAVIS
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