Red Clay Gospel

This is to feeling a bit poetic… and pensive. Yes, pun intended.

Beneath my feet,
a red earth hums —
thick as blood,
rich as memory.
Alabama clay,
magic dust,
The marrow of the land
where my people pressed prayers
into the belly of earth
with bare hands.

They say it’s just dirt.
But I know better.
I was told:
This clay is rich
with the blood of your ancestors.”

We walk on a carpet
woven from bones and iron,
soil alive with stories told
too proud to die,
too wise to remain silent.

This is hoodoo rouge,

Alabama alchemy
cosmic dust,
the same red hue
that stains the skin of Mars —
as above,
so below.
A map of the heavens
pressed deep into my palms
and the soles of my feet.

It is no accident
that this ground cradles me.
It is no accident
that my hands shape it,
that my brush stirs it
into paint, 

Into past
into prophecy.

What others call clay,
I call memory.
I call power.
I call Divinity’s quiet language
speaking in crimson whispers.

In this earth,
I see my people rising,
not as ghosts
but as constellations,
ascendants marking the way
for those yet borne.

And so I gather it —
pinches of past,
handfuls of hope —
not to conjure ill
or trade in superstition,
but to remember
that we are more than flesh,
more than fear,
more than forgotten.

We are magic dust,
we are stars,
we are the red earth’s gospel,
sung long, low,
and rising.

“Rise”, red clay on watercolor paper