We Will Dance When You Sing

We Will Dance When You Sing

-- for the episcopal ordination of Fernand Cheri, OFM

They would send the boy

to the edge of the land

                                       when

one of the old ones smelled a storm

See if a stranger walks in need

and bring them

                               He was the child

who did not doubt

                                 they

had seen his haze-haunted eyes

and knew

                        One new seeking

found the man who walked   pushing

a song far before him

                                      Boy and man stood

still

         unlocking the curved bone

and stone necklace    the man

leaned to the fence

                        You belong

to this

               And his song faded

before clouds blackened the sky –

Later

           one by one   they fingered

his skin   his shirt    his hair

What must we

                         carry

Tell us

what

and how

and where

                     the circle will appear

We will dance

when you sing

                               Sun sparks

the stone

                  and then

they swim in his eyes

                                      home

to where his dream-song

led

23 March 2015
New Orleans

While this poem has its own integrity, one note is offered as background. Decades ago, the first Black Catholic Bishop of the 20th century, the Most Reverend Harold R. Perry, SVD, made a gift of his pectoral cross to then-Father Fernand J. Cheri, III -- with the blessing of "you will need this some day."  

Bishop Perry was the ordaining prelate for my own ordination, May 27, 1972, in East St. Louis, Illinois. Bishop Cheri has been a constant support and collaborator of mine for many years, including his authorial contributions to Sweet, Sweet Spirit: Prayer Services from the Black Catholic Church. This man brings what is useful of our past into the present, in order to help us walk and sing and dance into our future --which is, of course, the foundational meaning of "Sankofa".