The road to clarksdale bumpy same as all these roads around here out snaking out toward the fields, rutted, rutting, falling into curious muddy mountainous roads falling and heaving in just six feet of width, to the water, to the wind, to the trucks and driving up navigating this simple road not sure if I could push this little Camry out in neutral, probably not, I am tiresome, and knowing - practically seeing - this old ghost mule trotting in smiling defiance, glee, even - down the same road, transparent, confident, knowing from years, decades, of knowing - trotting down the same road and probably knowing the same way all the folks knew the land, the way I can see the swerve in the dirt around divets and ditches and holes liable to pop a tare, and knowing the road like a runner knows it, like a bird could see seventy feet up, knowing how the road works without understanding it kind of knowing.
Yes this mule would take twice or thrice so long to get to itta been, but we woulda gotta safe and fast and never-lost, never stuck, mules never right-turn into each other crash, except maybe at high rates of speed, but even then. Never crash head-on, they don’t even go into gunfire, battle-sounds, ever, they have some kind of intrinsic ideals, smarts, thoughts, yes - life and revenge is good but life is best. Always move toward life. I never seen no kind of ditch of mud a mule couldn’t pick through, couldn’t get through or avoid in the beginning, my dreams torn up into love-lost-silliness or car-wrecks, always, shuddering into the stink of a car-wreck and still -
A white mule against the brown plowed mud of winter, the sleepy greening of spring, it always happens but leaves us questioning, a crow black in the greenery of it, corn and soy and cotton flowering against the heat of a southern summer, jousting with life against that old star, picked, pruned, used - hopefully loved - into the fall, leaving the ground to grow again.
There is so much strangeness in the world; probably more if I had my good-glasses on, but here I am, living same as everyone,
Purple sky, indigo sky out against the clouds, strange and hazy like maybe-maybe dimensions are real and maybe-maybe looking at one building once is the last you might see it,
Sitting shivering as though it is just a thing to be solved, transcended, still grateful that this is the experience and not a life, not a lifetime, life-experience of cold and chill and no-escape, instead here I am in this land of delta-goodfull, this land of of good-heart, maybe mostly unknown-heart, speaking of person and land, speaking of land and county, county and state, nature and world- I expect good, I expect giving, because it has all got us this far, but -
Silly old knitted scarves for trees, trees will be fine, they have always been fine, they were fine before we began to cut them down, all these old red woods, old loblollies, old longleaf, old cypress, they grow, been growing, I guess those Georgia collards would grow like trees, it was never in their nature (look at nature) imagine a swamp of cypress and collards, all adapted to their old bayous.
