Pine Hill Cemetery, Wilmington, NC, 1990

Pine Hill Cemetery, Wilmington, NC, 1990

“What yah doin’ heah, boy?”

asks the town sheriff

of the shiny black man

standing up to his hips

in the partially dug grave.

The strapping young man

fixes the sheriff in the gaze

of his piercing black eyes.

He holds a pick in both hands.

He’s naked to the waist.

His biceps and pecs bulge out.

The sheriff’s hand moves to his gun.

 

The grave is a neatly laid out rectangle

with flat vertical walls.

The removed soil and stones

are piled to the black man’s right.

A shovel lays on the grass to his left.

Headstones fill in the distant background

beyond a cinder block wall.

 

The black man’s bold look disconcerts the sheriff.

His eyes say, “Leave me alone or else.”

The sheriff calculates the time he has

to pull his gun and shoot

if the nigger jumps up, pick in hand,

to murder him.

“Son, where yah diggin’ is not

within the cemet’ry walls”.

 

The thought enters the sheriff’s head

that if he was hacked to death

and buried here in this grave

in this isolated small grove of trees,

no one would ever find him

He takes a step backward.

He removes his hand from his gun.

“This time I’ll check on you at the office.

Good thing you was born when you was.

Yasiree, Bub”.

The sheriff turns and leaves.

The black man returns to his work.

 

©Sherman Poultney 13 October 2013

Note: based on Black&White photograph by John Rosenthal, http://www.johnrosenthal.com/JRNew/NCGAL/index.html