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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?
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Copyright © Patrick Kelly | Year Posted 2022

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