Delta Dirt
Delta Dirt
By
Patrick Kelly
I think back through years long past, when I was a child.
I looked across cotton fields that ran a country mile
Cotton grew in all the fields, the old house sat on one end,
In front, an old cottonwood tree, on the bank at the the river bend.
I can see my grandfather, as my mind wanders back to long
ago,
sitting on the porch steps, a file in one hand, in the other a
hoe.
My grandmother in the kitchen, the smell of ham and eggs,
Biscuits, hot and buttered, on a table with square legs.
Then all those Sunday dinners, chicken piled high on a plate,
vegetables, fresh from the garden, men and children ate first,
the women would wait.
The life of a cotton farmer, a family that got up before the
morning light,
In the fields by sunrise, sitting on the porch at night.
Picking time would come around and I picked in my little tow
sack,
Thirty pounds I could pick, a lot of weight for a little boy’s
back.
We never knew times were hard, there was hunting and fishing
too.
I still remember my first shotgun, a 410 hand me down, I
thought it new
Times spent hunting under the river hill and a sling-shot
shooting at jars
My brother riding that old bicycle, I sat on the handle bar.
Winter was time to kill a hog, in the smokehouse hams would
hang.
We drank water from a bucket, fresh from an artesian spring.
So, when I think back to those days, why do they seem so
neat?
Wonder, if I could go back to that delta dirt under my feet?
.
Copyright © Patrick Kelly | Year Posted 2022
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