The priest from Tennessee leans close,
passes plates of conch, black beans, rice.
You went to their devil worship.
He moves the gold cross in slow semi-circles
on his neck, hands her a plate of sliced mango.
The bench scrapes the dirt floor, and he stands.
God’s told me to stop this voodoo.
He hasn’t heard: eighty percent Christian,
one hundred percent voodoo. That’s Haiti.
He hasn’t seen the cathedral ceiling
in Port-au-Prince, the wedding at Cana:
Jesus in bright tunic turns water into wine;
Baron Samedi , voodoo god of death,
leans back in his rocking chair, smokes a cigar.
A homily translated into Creole and hymns sung in French
waft over the darkening waters of the Gulf of La Gonave.
She wakes at midnight, hears a rooster crow.
Families line the clinic wall. They’ve walked miles
to Montrois, from Gonaives, from Bruge du Mer,
to see the doctor today, the only day of the week he’s here;
they come barefooted, carrying children. Inflating the cuff,
she takes a man’s blood pressure, high like all the rest.
On the beach, the priest teaches, and two seminarians
balance open Bibles on their knees.
She flicks at a fly on her face,
watches it buzz out the window,
leans outside the clinic door to call another name.
