On The Death of My Brother

On the Death of my Brother

My brother Bill hated religion but he tried real hard to love God.
He told the preachers to leave him alone.
He knew about God.
God lived alone in the cold dark woods of Mississippi.
Many hours my brother sat in those woods with his rifle watching for deer.
He loved the wild animals in the woods and he loved to feed on their flesh.
This was the koan of his life.
Animal blood seeped warm from his hands into the earth.
My brother began to talk to himself, he began to wait for God.
While he waited, he found wild mushrooms and learned their names.
He ate the mushrooms,
Cooking them up with venison and rabbit and fish and squirrel.
Onions and garlic and tomatoes and all sorts of spices.
Lots of bacon fat and gravy and biscuits and black-eyed peas.
Sure enough God began talking to my brother.
My brother and God began meeting secretly like lovers in the woods.
My brother enjoyed the conversation and the fellowship
But my brother drank too much vodka and orange juice.
After a while God didn’t have anymore patience to talk to my brother.
That was okay.
My brother didn’t have the patience to talk to God.
He didn’t trust God.
He couldn’t make love anymore.
He was confused.
What was death anyway?
My brother had seen so many animals die.
They had been his guide.
One day out on the Mississippi River he shot five fat mallard ducks.
He cried to see the ducks fall out of the grey sky.
His time had also come to its end.
His heart exploded inside the shell of his body.
At his funeral the preacher talked about my brother’s drunkenness.
The preacher said that drunkenness was the meaning of my brother’s life.
The preacher said my brother’s life taught the rest of us a lesson.
A life wasted.
The end.
The preacher didn’t understand.
This is why my brother hated religion.


Bobby Byrd
Posted over on Newspaper Tree