Folk Life

What will they sing of this morning The women passing by Coming down from the dry mountain On their way to the city? What long time memory Surrenders the heart in songs? What joy, what expectation Through dim brown of dawn Through the soft bodied mist Perfumed with fragrance From the whoring of the trees With sun? They carry baskets brim laden With all the earnings of a season Between the time of clearing the land The sweet urge of sowing And patient tending of what was growing Out of their purpose, Some kind of dream illusive before Some hope of making something Of the self better than the self From the anxious reaping In the back bending sun To the market of doubt and faith And relief That for now its done. The plans will change again Children bring sudden emergencies They do not plan for ... And yet all of that is carried In the basket of a song. I remember lying there In the passion of the mango season Hearing the fruits drop Thinking of them sweetly Like Melveta Coming through the guinea grass' Spindly trail Melbourne held her hands there The yellow girl And the brown boy The certainty of money In the color of love What was I thinking In my heart without a song? O not this Not here in the superficial wilderness Not this journey From which my being long For women coming down the morning In the mountain of a song.