Revival

Homecomings: as a child, these August Sundays

were favorites, skipping into

an hour-behind time zone for church

with family-packed pews and faces familiar

to my mom, my aunt, my grandmother

becoming familiar to me.

.

The revivals broke for lunch

under the pavilion's shade while

heat stole in through the open sides.

I'd find creatures with the rest of the children,

granddaddy long legs ambling away from us,

or listen to stories the older kids told.

Like how the dead in the nearby cemetery

might come out to walk again.

.

The cemetery grew during years

we could not attend revivals, having

to shirk homecomings in fear of health

crises turned communal, communicable.

You made a final homecoming, Grandmother,

and now you are there in that cemetery

with those would-be familiar faces

I never quite learned enough and

I'm wishing for a revival, a

reversal of your departure and the departures

of people who once walked and filled

my nostalgia-gleaming August Sundays.