by Nochipa Pablio (aka Darlene, first published in 2004, StorySouth)
Ninety degrees
in dry September fields
all day long I lift
eighty pounds of green.
I am tiger lily dust
moistened from dew within,
my cocoa hair
streaked with caramel strands.
Scarred, calloused hands
twice their age,
touched by manly nails,
hoist these sacred stalks
until sinewy limbs
longing for apple tree shade
send me to drink divine
colorless warmth.
When the sky people
with their glory eyes
peep through the holes
in their velvet blanket
I fall clean
upon fresh sheets
and make love
to my peace.
*NOTE: I spent much of my youth working the tobacco fields of southern Kentucky. The work was hard and at the end of those summer days, especially the ones in September, when the fields were dry and the sky clear blue, there was nothing so inviting as a bath and a bed with clean sheets. For those who have worked the tobacco fields, you know. For those who haven’t, you have this poem to tell you a little of what it was like. This was life in Kentucky when I was young.
Oh how precious is the piece quilt that is each of us.
A menagerie of events, relationships, horrors and joys.
Pieces arranged by days, months and seasons
Then stitched together by the Hand of God
with golden threads of love, life and light;
The how of which, a mystery yet unknown.
Each quilt, alive and growing
Becomes brighter and eternal-
Each passing day it spawns and each piece and the whole
Warms the soul with joy unspeakable till this world can no longer contain it;
Till it is carried away by the Hand that stitched it.
I love this “piece” by you, Billy. Thank you for sharing. I thought of Herbert, Sim, A.Z., Ruth and of your parents when I wrote that poem way back in in 2004. I remembered the Labor Day housings most of all.