October again, or November, before i began keeping track:
Well. The ghosts live out on the road next to the church. And the soybeans are frail in their fields and they’re getting got up. And the poison ivy is happy, and the passionfruit is still full, and the clouds came down over the land. There is mud and there is grass and there is sky.
“she left me a fortune, and she left me money,”
I am not my best self, yet, but I will be,
Well, it seems like, this land is for me. The sky is for me - the light is for me. It feels like Providence reined me up for Mississippi, and when I leave she takes my whole spirit. And while I’m here I feel so good and I been barefoot most of the day today.
And the clouds have come in and the earth got cool.
The steady growl and howl of “i wished I was a catfish, swimming in the oh-ha great blue sea, oh law-hawd,”
oh, it’s you, and
This terrific current of life is unstoppable, unless you stop it, but it’ll carry you to the end, whatever world that is, and anymore it looks like I just got to roll on, roll on, roll on.
And I always choose falling in love. And it feels so good. This soul-plateau of happy-heartful-lonesomeness.
Like Mississippi Fred McDowell rolling into “well I thought I heard somebody calling me,” rocking and thunder and rain, “you can’t do me, like you done poor Shine,”
Life getting all electrified again.
Driving here, it felt like going back in time, in no Serious way, in no Critical way, just plain old going back, a strange shift,
Signs everywhere - on the trees and in the road, and that old man posted up, sitting in the faded blue peeling tire shop, on his bucket, waiting for customers,
Down the road, all these tornado shelters, and all these crosses, and all this life, hidden back and tucked up, and still somehow Loud and Strange,
Lord and Savior,
I got questions that I just keep to myself. And. And. And. I hope all your dreams come true. Feeling a little lost in the luster of it all, and that’s all right. You have surely become more of an apparition and a saint than a human - I stay grateful for you, every day.
Thankful for all of this love in my life. Thankful for all the reasons to love. Thankful for all of the people to love, and for all of the love they share with me.
Thankful for this new life, even with it’s wasps and red ants and buzzing ghosts and burglar alarms and flies, thankful for this new life, out here past highway 61 and old highway 61, and closer to this ghost of Charley out in Renova, and for this life closer to Beulah, and this life under these bright stars and moon and this muse,
If nothing, in all of my failings, I hope folks feel my love when I get this way,
And you are the rolling thunder and the threat of tornado, and the implosion of life, and Heaven Knows, and Art and art, too, and the blues, and this lesson on life where you can have a and b and c, and you don’t always want it but then life brings it to you, forces it on you, and
And the thunder rolls out and the field is muddy and I’m sinking down, Lord I’m sinking down,
But it’s ok cuz I been so stuck for a a year and a half or two,
Crying upstairs about the blues and juke joints, crying upstairs about idears.
What you gonna do when your trouble get like mine?
Please keep me on mind.