Eden Road

 By Ramey Channell

The road from Mama’s house snakes down the mountain,

narrow and black, tar-fragrant under heavy summer sun.

Alabama sun beats down like judgment, but also blesses;

beatitudes resound beside the road where blackberries glow

like fat black juicy bits of down-to-earth Heaven.

 

Voices singing Hallelujah! from the bushes;

loud whirring mechanical heartbeat of insect chorus;

katydids, hot and happy Hallelujah chanting,

till the air runs over with too much sound;

the world runs over with too much joy.

 

Mountain voodoo blackberry joy!

Katydid chanting Hallelujah joy!

 

The narrow black road snakes down the blessed mountain,

cutting right through the middle of hotter-than-hell Paradise, 

like a keen heavy knife, a gleaming two-edged sword,

plunging clean and deep, down to the pulsing center,

of a humid, sugar-sweet blackberry pie. 

 

And I stand beside that road, enchanted, heat-dazed, fingers poised

above the fruit of hot summer katydid Hallelujah Heaven,

motionless, enraptured, listening to another sound.

Deep in sacred shade, under heavy bushes of Paradise lost,

He sings, He rattles: dusty sound like pebbles roiling in a tin can.

 

Voodoo mountain blackberry joy!

Rattle and snap Hallelujah joy!

 

And He sings of blackberries from the beginning of time,

and the many blessings of summer, sun, and shade.

Glassy sharp obsidian blade of rattling sound,

cutting through the sultry heat and heartbeat, down to the quick;

He lays claim to bushes, shade, sunshine, earth and Heaven.

 

Alabama sun beats down like judgment, but also blesses;

hasty beatitudes back up the magic mountain road,

away from the bushes of Paradise and the lust of the berries.

Those who have ears, let them hear: Hallelujah!

And those who have blackberry mountain voodoo joy,

 

Let them rattle, rattle, blackberry joy!

Blackberry voodoo Hallelujah joy!