The Mule Sat Down

Mama died last night
on a cotton planting moon.
Eighth grade has to wait
for the pale thin girl,
the oldest daughter
in overalls and braids,
now graduated to
hard-booted woman.
She plows behind
a huge brown mule.

There’s a wake to plan,
chickens to kill, pluck, fry,
biscuits to roll, seven
little brothers and sisters
with knotty hair to comb.
But the mule just sat down
in the middle of the row.

She tries to coax him
with sugar lumps,
pretty honey words.
That fool won’t budge.

He smacks his lips, sits
under a noon-white sky,
breathing slow, like
all the time in eternity
just rolls down those
hot, gritty rows.

There’s Mama’s body
washed, waiting, laid
out in her Sunday best.
Thirty eight relatives
will arrive by nightfall.
Little blue butterflies
swirl like demons
in front of a
young girl’s face.
But the mule still sits
in the middle of the day.

She kicks that mule,
but all he’ll do is
make an indignant umph.
She sits on his back, bites
his long ear hard, gets
stinking, nasty, no good
mule fur between her teeth.

His big brown eyeball rolls
toward the dust-red barn.

There’s a broke down truck,
potatoes to wash, floors to mop.
Good Baptist girls don’t cuss,
but if she had a firecracker, she’d
shove it up that mule’s fat ass.

She feels like crying, laying down
on the sand, turning to root,
sprouting cotton from her hands.
Instead, she knows she must
hitch up a woman’s heavy load.

Now folks riding down
her long hard road
slow down to watch
the skinny little girl
pull a plow
like her life is on fire
while a brown mule sits
and watches, and waits
for another day to go.