May Coming & Going

another mule letter from the studio desk (that used to be in his photo gallery downtown but he said it could go with me) in the Mississippi Delta.

May 13th 8:29 pm - 

Going south towards the grocery store, heat lightning in the distance. 

Watched a muskrat pluck greens from the bank and slide back into the water with the leaves in his mouth, swimming.

Cows all at once in the pond under a blue sky, 

The grain elevator blue and purple against the sunset, all shadows.

He could talk for hours about how color informs shape, I usually listen pretty closely but sometimes my mind wanders to the cats out in the yard.

The whole field has come up, some new things I don’t remember seeing, learned the name black snake root today, 

Waiting on the collard greens, nothing makes me happier than to grow those, their leaves so generous. Wondering if all four plants will cook down into enough to eat, with his pepper sauce and cornbread. 

The world all full of wonder every day, I forget to look,

Red roots coming out of the willow tree, all alien looking, 

marigolds around the turkey’s head, we do better all of the time but I never did as right as I should have by her, but she kept on for so long. 

I don’t think about it being the last time watching the catalpa swell in blossoming, 

Walking the soybean field part burned and part growing back in weeds, eating the first blackberries of the summer, yes we made it to early summer, heat close and hot and I already been dehydrated bad once, forgetting how quickly it comes on here, how often. 

Walking back and thinking about all of the heartbreak I put myself through last year. And how I really did all of that to myself. On the other side, and still alive, with brighter colors and a happier heart, a stronger one I believe I could put through anything all over again and make it through even better than the last time. Following the seasons, beginning and ending and beginning and ending, so on, so on, forever. 

We went riding and I saw parts of the delta I have never seen before, every color of soil down to the Tallahatchie, 

And I love all of my best friends, especially the two that grew up in the same general area and disagree on almost everything, even the unimportant things. 

He fishes every day and the river is muddy and roiling, carp thundering the water every so often under an over cast sky. Walls covered in arrowheads and tools, 

He was talking about Robert Johnson lived out on his road, census had it, everything. Old census man back riding around knocking on every door. And the reason he got so good at singing the blues is because he was gone a year. His wife, his pregnant wife died in childbirth. That’ll help you sing like you been crying, fast. 

Telling her, I wish I felt worse about this. But I still remember them pulling the horse with log chains by her feet onto the trailer. No one in the grandstand even to witness. The jockey choking up on the turf course a few feet away, his life flashed in front of his eyes for the twentieth time. The trainer looked at me and asked if I was ok. I remember how he treated me, standing in the doorway crying, all he could do was laugh and spit, “Silly women and their hearts.” 

So the peaceful death beneath the willow tree for the turkey seemed all right. 

Planting and he said Appalachian people called this stoop work, stooping and scooping fertilizer and worm castings, drawing a careful circle around the pepper plants and tomato plants, pressing the dirt firm. And he said, stoop work. I looked out and saw you stooping and thought of that. I said - so we are genetically predisposition for this. Or I tried to say that, but I can’t get my words right around him. He’s real quiet. One of those kinds that makes me wish I was quiet again, too. 

Driving the old road in the soft mist and fog, it looked like North Carolina and had that sweet smell of it, too, blue and wet and morning. Climbing mountains, too tired in the hour to say anything to the men at The Country Store right there nearly to Alabama, shooting stories over breakfast and I could feel the lines drawn under my eyes, trying to smile and not yawn, 

Lining up blue covered cotton seeds on his forearm, explaining you should plant three times the size of the seed. Mustard seeds you can just rake around in the dirt for that reason. 

Wondering about his hands, which never seemed quite so big as when we were planting that day, thick, imagining it must be some kind of holiness to bring so much life into the world every year. 

It rained soft on the new plants in the ground and you could see them stand up proud and joyful the next day, all of the poor roots and dry soil they came in, erased, instead, hope. 

Imagining the man that sings old time at their church in a folding chair singing old gospel over the new plants in the older ground. 

Chainsaw, tractor, gate, 

I like to keep my hands hard around all of these farming men, even when they wear gloves, I like to shake hands like I mean it, and I hope they can tell I might know about something. 

We threw down roll roofing and moved scaffolding and braced the chicken coop and built a floor, we planted and drove tractors and cut wood and hammered a fence together,

It rained hard the next day, he explained that it could be hard on the corn seeds and cotton seeds and cantaloupe and cucumber we had just buried three-together down the rows, him carefully hoeing their resting place which is also their birthplace. It could be hard on these new little seedlings because the rain packs the dirt down and the next day if it was sunny, the packed dirt would dry hard the same as clay into a kiln. 

The whole world works like this. Simply, predictably. But it seems like magic. 

So I told you about the heat lightning and stoop work and turkey, and we went to Delaware Park on accident for that horse and jockey, and been watching the sunset in Alabama more often than I could’ve ever dreamed. I get in the bed under the quilt and stretch my arms and legs out and fall asleep hard, no rest like the kind you get from working, waking and watching the soft blue morning glow into the room and across the ceiling, 

Hoping this new summer finds you with a sacred heart and hopeful. Amen.

It is the season to hole up and paint, working towards Finster Fest and the Black Prairie Arts Festival and The One Night Stand at Ole Miss and a Very Special Show at 100 Men Hall in November.

You can find three of my paintings in Florence, Alabama, as part of the Arts Alive exhibition. They’ll be there through the end of the month.

https://www.alabamaartsalive.com/kd-center

Very fortunate to have been juried into Cūr Nōn at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana. That show opens June 10th. See you there.

https://acadianacenterforthearts.org/

Prints can always be found at www.churchgoinmule.threadless.com

If there’s something you’d like a print of, but can’t find it, i’ll do my best to make it happen.

it’s Bessie Jones and she’s singing So Glad I’m Here, and wherever you are i hope you can sing it, too.