DORLON FAMILY CEMETERY

By Carol Case

I know that the bones of my ancestors are buried
Beside one another in Bayou La Batre and Heron Bay,
That boats beating their names bob in brackish water
Beneath the southern skies where egret and seagull hover
Over white caps, cattails, driftwood and oyster beds,
Searching the horizon for piling on which to land.

Several times I’ve packed and tried to leave this land,
But even from a distance I could feel it buried
In my voice like oysters nestled in salty beds
It rippled out from me like waves on the bay.
Each time I drifted away, the place seemed to hover
Within, forcing me to seek out local bodies of water.

My earliest memories are of family and bay water,
Leaping off wharves jutting out from the land,
Or watching through windows as rain clouds hover.
I expect one day to be brought home and buried
Between blood kin, within walking distance of the boy
Where my fore bearer’s headstones are lined like beds.

Every season the shrimpers head out past the beds
That lie beneath the surface of brackish water.
They spread nets like veils and wings upon the bay,
And get their bearing looking homeward toward the land.
Solitary fishermen still stand astern of their boats and hover.
Dipping hook, line, and sinker in search of what lies buried

Beneath, not so very far from where their breed are buried
And I wonder if, at night, they too dream in their beds
Of mothers who always watched the sea, the women who hover
Over children playing near the edges of water,
Mothers, wives whose daily prayers whispered fathers to land
With candles lit to keep the howling hurricane wind at bay.

It’s not the land that holds us but the salt air and the bay.
It takes a lifetime to learn where reefs are buried,
To watch the sunsets as lights appear twinkling from land,
Sleeping out on screened porches, breezes blowing across the beds,
Knowing wherever we go, we’ll be lulled to our home on the water
To ask a blessing on the boats when heavy rain clouds hover.

Now I’m back home in this place, my feet buried in the sand bed
At the edge of Mobile Bay, and I feel the familiar breezes hover
Like an ancestral spirit sending messages across shallow waters.