April It's All Good Friday
From the studio desk listening to them mow at the church across the street, dogs in the yard, cat in the sun, little seeds sprouting,
Working, and working hard, the kind where you have to stop and just breath out and look around before you get back to the job. We planted all kinds of strange squash and cucumbers last year, and this year I scaled way back - the Mexican sour cucumbers are still in their packet. It seems so quickly to go from Mardi Gras to Easter, from sprout to a tangled mess of cucumbers. No corn until I’m mentally prepared to do battle again, how badly I wanted a field of blue corn last year.
Man, i am not saying i did the garden all by myself this year, he did till into the night one evening trying to break up the ground and he thought maybe in the dark it tilled better, the dirt got softer and sleepy, but i hoed some rows (eight but who’s counting) and tilled and shoveled mounds and walking back under storm clouds in the wind after i went out and spread bermuda grass hoping that this time next year it might be a reasonable pasture, and i was beat, i said i could probably do another bag of seeds out there but i’m so tired i just can’t,
and i remember him telling me sometimes it’s good to work in the wind, especially spraying, maybe throwing seeds, it can help it reach further,
Walking the yard because I believe if I do that it will give me both space, rest, and ideas, if only I just make it the routine, and new things are still blooming and the asparagus is beginning to give out, he said I couldn’t ever paint them because Manet did them so well, but they’re so beautiful in the fridge and so plenty, reading about haikus and how they’re written about seasons, asparagus a sign of spring for certain:
From the dark delta dirt,
Out of winter to spring,
There, asparagus
The indigo bushes we got for arbor day have all seemed to survive, their blossoms this rich chocolate smell and strange caterpillar flowers. I keep forgetting to ask questions.
She’s the one that is always giving me rich things like olive oil or little bottles to keep things in, always calling when there are too many tomatoes or cucumbers or peppers, and she called and said I am so tired of planting, don’t you want some tomato starts? And mine were on the porch in the morning sun looking very beautiful and to me, very fragile, because they’d been so long in the house bearing my hopes.
Another year of Good Friday, and I guess it’s right to plant that day if you want your plants to rise. Another year of sort-of planning, and mostly not, another year of plenty without even having anything to show for it yet. The little sunflower seeds are clustered and coming up, the tomatoes in their rich rows, waiting for the squash to show its face, I planted only three seeds for each variety because usually one squash plant is more than enough. It rained this afternoon and it was enough to coax the seeds up, fat and green and working hard,
Every day watching the weather app for rain and always thinking of him saying don’t believe it until you see it, reading the RIVER FLOOD WARNING advisory but not envisioning it, the doctor came over and I was busy making rows and stopping and breathing out, while they visited and he’s got this victorian shot gun shack moved from downtown Rosedale, used to be a lawyer’s office, he got shot getting off a train forty years ago and no one will tell me who did it or why because “it just wouldn’t be right,” and they moved it to the river and he said the water was rising, it was just a little ways from their floor, climbing the piers.
Rode out to see for ourselves because don’t believe it until you see it I guess, I just wanted to understand, and back towards DeSoto lake the water almost meets the bottom of the levee. You can just see the road leading back towards all of the camps. And then, six turkeys at the water in their colors, black brown like the woods and sharp looking, slowing down to take a photo they make the flight to the old river side, into a tall tree across the water, taller than the levee.
He said, imagine if the levee wasn’t here, this water would be already at the house. Later, one, two, three, four, wild hogs at the waters edge, one standing and watching us, unmoving. Later, a big black boar hog up and over the levee running like a bear. Later, two splashing and swimming into the water,
Later, a raccoon all fat and swimming with his tail afloat and trailing. Those horses from the lake moved to higher, lower, ground, buckskin, bay, white. Cows and donkeys, an old mother hound dog and an old white lab running around the cows and the cows chasing back, the world of the river and the levee alive with unexpected change, it said River expected to peak on Wednesday. Deer in the distance of the sod farm, meanwhile, the delta well planted up in corn and soybeans and rice and it seemed like everyone decided to burn on the same day, driving south into the clouds of smoke, portals and strange visions back towards home.
Later, in the yard and counting treasures, and tough chickens, and I saw a baby cottonmouth not far from my barefeet, he is still out there, clay colored and beautiful and with his lime green tail. The giant water snake with frog eyes floats in the pond or matches the fallen branches in the water, he patrols the same as last year, curious and fast. A cottonmouth, full grown, on top of the water towards the island, a black racer blue in the warm road heading east. Another water snake, smaller, more curious, climbing into the sweet potato bed, he sees me before I see him, darts back to the pond - I told this story and he said, I wonder what he was up to, was he trying to get under the weed barrier? I said, I wonder how he saw it from the pond, I wonder what he was thinking. Snake thoughts, snake hopes, snake dreams.
Thinking all the time about how so much life is within so many feet, inches, of us - ants, ticks, birds, snakes, and usually they are camoflauged so well they’re hard to see, a woodpecker still masked while he works on the chinaberry, their sweet star and purple flowers falling like rain and distantly fragrant, causing me to always look up, a little garter snake while I examine the weeds growing up between the bricks, a shed snake skin on the hackberry tree where we always leave out on our walks, was he right there when I went by here? How long does it take for a snake to transform? Always thinking about my uncle saying, watch out for snakes right now, they’re shedding and it makes them blind and extra mean.
Fishing briefly, one worm hung up in a tree at the second cast, it was too pretty of a day to surrender, so on the way to get a cricket and a new hook, a foot from me a diamond headed brown thing, curled up and watching, on his way somewhere, a water snake proving peace again among the creatures, all flight when we are always ready to fight.
There’s an armadillo that I believes lives under the propane tank, and on quiet nights you can hear him rustling right outside of the window, the first time I saw him I had never heard him before either, a little blinking squinting thing immersed in his work. His evidence traced from out near the hole to over in front of the chicken’s coop, harmless, eating leftover seeds and looking for little bugs that surely exist at their stoop, up to the shed, across the driveway, working. The dogs sometimes hear him and wait patiently at the window until they cannot stand it anymore and bark and beg to go investigate. Last night, a possum in the compost pile, he dug in, he dug out. Identifying with the armadillo, there’s so much to discover out here,
Walking around careful not to step on any bees and so the focus of vision is two feet (literally and mathematically) and desperately listening for their buzz, hopping through the clover. But in the two feet of gaze what am I missing outside of it? Snakes perfect in their camouflage, little worms in the buckshot, toads, crickets big eyed and retreating into the earth, she exclaimed this morning, you got a big bullfrog! Over in the pond talking to you!
Reading so much about what writers have to say about their writing, and he said I just wanted to get the rhythm. That’s all you need to be able to do, the rhythm says it all. Trying to think of what he meant exactly, how to do it, and at the one non-ethanol place in town, you pump and then they just trust you to go in there and pay. And I do, two older gentlemen on their lunch break talking softly and he’s saying, you know…that place where Charley Pride came from, and talking like leaves in the wind, and I am trying to get the rhythm, and one man says Sledge. In their soft khaki uniforms and in some old swiveling chairs and sandwich paper on their laps and I try not to stare while the secretary doesn’t look at me and says extra charge with the card,
They painted the vet’s office and he still uses notecards, and she’s lost fifty pounds, turns out she lives up the road behind the man with that horse who goes to her daughter’s church, and he shows me the needle with all of the fluid he pulled out of her sprained joint, and grins. He’s got the right face for grinning at people, his eyes squinch up in delight, everything.
Later, someone said, yeah they’re kind of a legendary family in those parts, his daddy was watching a football game while the son was working on his truck. He must have been making too much noise because the daddy comes out and tells him to quit it, cut-it-out. And of course the son is trying to get somewhere and quick and don’t quit, so the daddy comes back out with dynamite and throws it into the driver’s seat. That’s the kind of family they were.
The birds start in the morning right before sunrise. The weather is startling in the morning and the mosquitos come out in to the evening, and I felt a humid breeze the other day that sleepily reminded me, walk barefoot, enjoy every little bit of this, it’s not much longer in this season,
Painting the house and reminded of once in New Orleans it seems like I was going to meet my parents at Horn’s when it was in the original location, parked a few blocks away and walking, a man hired to paint one of the shotguns. He didn’t look like a painter, he looked like someone trying to make a little money so he could get something to eat, and he was up on this ladder with paint that kept dropping on the windows and he kept cussing like hell, all of the worst words, and very loudly. And I’m up there on a ladder and the chickens come around and try to eat paint and the dog is digging holes under the cedar, and the cat in meowing from inside the house whenever she sees me. And I’m not doing a good job and the house should’ve been finished already and I don’t really like painting houses and especially not the eaves and I was sort of frustrated because I had to use oil based paint at one point and I got it everywhere, I mean it. And I wanted to cuss about as bad as that strange man that early morning, but I washed up and went inside. The next day, back to work and the light was good and the breeze was cool and I decided it might be better to change my attitude, how good this house will look when it’s done, a little oasis of trees and green and song out in the Delta out next to these coming-up fields of corn and it will be finished next week, and that was all it took, whistle while you work, the spring whispering, don’t forget about me, all the seeds sprouting trumpets, come see the garden some time,
Thank y’all to everyone that came out to the opening at Bozarts Gallery in Water Valley, Mississippi, it was a pleasure to get to see Shelley, the director of our blues museum, Lee the immaculate artist (Lee's work), and i got to meet Ralph Eubanks, which i thought was really cool - he stood there and listened to all of the questions i’m sure he’s been asked 200 times - he’s got a book coming out in 2026 i am looking forward to reading. He biked past the house last summer, knows just where i’m living. Suzi’s work was great and it was wonderful to get to meet the Reverend’s daughter and it was just a place abuzz. Anyway - thank y’all that came, thank y’all that stayed home. The weather wasn’t any kind of joke. So glad everyone ended up safe-and-sound. The show comes down May 31st - check it out on Friday or Saturday, or by appointment, and get some lunch at BTC Grocery or Sweet Mama’s, pick up a book from Violet Valley, have a good time, transport yourself somewhere different for a brief moment, if you want.
https://www.facebook.com/bozartsgallery/
It’ll be quiet here this summer, working towards a festival in the fall and a solo show in Wheeling, West Virginia, at Gallery 2265 that opens July 30th. Really a privilege to get to show where so much spectacular work has already hung. And looking forward to the drive up there. Show cards coming in June or July, i imagine.
Thank y’all for all the of the kind words on the writing that was published this month. It’s pretty surreal all of the time to get to live like this.
https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/visual-performing-arts/gerald-deloach/
Many thanks to the people that remember about the threadless - it’s a lifeline some months.
https://churchgoinmule.threadless.com/
ps. thank you if you made it this far and read close, you’re terrific. i have a big bag of russian mammoth sunflowers and i’d love to send you some, like maybe 10 seeds ought to be bright enough - email me your address directly and i’ll send some - churchgoinmule at gmail dot com.
this is one of those songs that made the bridge to blues music for me, i heard it on the radio the other day and was instantly transported, but back then of course i couldn’t really understand a little bit about what he’s talking about. James Cotton was born in Tunica, and really kind of a superstar if you want to think about it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cotton and i don’t know much but i’m glad i didn’t have to grow up in a sharecropper shack among a number of children and know what it meant to chop cotton in this heat, to work hard and not have anything to show for it according to what cotton prices did that year, and how much i owed the landlord, he said i think she must have thrown her chopping hoe into the bayou because she cooked every meal, cleaned, washed, and ironed - she was a school teacher you understand - and she shouldn’t have to sweat in the garden, too.
Thanks for including a haiku. Loved the art and photos, and I always enjoy your writing. I look for more music by James Cotton.
Like a letter from home. ❤️