affectionately call "Mommy Sweet Potato."
(Sallie Canada May 22th, 1936-May 18th, 2016)
Sallie
My earliest memories of you was of a pocket book
swing as I waited with baited breath for your beautiful silhouette to show upon
the horizon of a dirty Bronx street there’s
my pretty mother come to rescue me from the confusion of kids playing hopscotch
on the hot summers city concrete
Leather purse holding the wages of food for we hungry children hungry for spaghetti
and rice and pinto beans corn flakes along with the remnant of left over milk
saved like succor from the breast of a woman who put in more than 14 hours of
work to feed the mouths of her little darlings
Nights fill with terror and the screams of daddy who
felt it made better sense to beat the hell out of a princes to make up for a hard
day’s mafia work
Mommy taught me how to read the bible so I was way
ahead of my colleagues who wanted to know how Dick chased Jane mommy got a bachelor’s degree after raising a
family while parlaying as a nurse in the ghettos of the South Bronx to become a
school teacher she taught bible classed quoted scripture better than the
Archbishop of Canterbury we buried her not… she said The flames are my end so burn me like the mustache man burn me like the
flames of love that simmered in all your hearts-you feel me?
Sallie I still see you crocheting blankets in the
night organ and piano you used to play spiritual cords that wafted into the wee
hours like nocturnal serenades now I too play piano but there’s no forgotten
memories of the southern roots burrowed deep in the red South Carolinian soil I
wasn’t born there like you but I can still remember grandpa walking like a one of the prophets of old through the tall
stalks of corn and his thirst for sweet potatoes the lonely waving fields of
amber wheat you wanted to come back to that resting place even after your last
stage of heart failure your spirit travelled across the parch and arid lands it
finally made it there to roost and to repose amongst the house you had built as
a monument to the…
Wilson clan a testament to the Samuels DNA which
still whispers like antebellum phantoms in my vein I really miss you Sallie Canada you were light shining in dark
places you were so stoic and Cherokee you Indian woman you fought off the last
spasms of death until alas you gave
up your final breath
To fly away toward meridional skies like a winged
Corsica o’er Kelly Camden fields of green there
you are with your ancestors singing We
have overcome for you were strong in life now you are strong in spirit
And there remains the legacy of your love and of
your fried chicken like Aunt Sugar Lump
and Aunt Mamie’s collard greens and
dumpling they endure in me I have pictures of you now smiles frozen in
sequential time-but they are not you for you were like the
sun that broke through the long night in the early hours of dawn during the stillness
of twilight-I still hear you whispering
holy words purloined from the scriptures like a cantor before the Torah
shields
Alas it’s at this moment I know what the name Sallie truly stood for: it meant Soulful Attributes of Loving Light &
Internal Endearment-you see mommy it is at this moment
I finally recognized
what you represented and I apologize ‘cause
it took me this long
Post
Script: Now I wear your unfinished green blanket as a scarf and I carry your
radiant smile with that ole peculiar South Carolinian pride.
