I don’t know why
I remember
the claustrophobic cotton fields
of the burning August South,
stalks seven to eight feet high.
I’m not Black,
African-American,
descendant of slave
but some sad times,
when I close my eyes,
I am afire in the early light of sticky fields.
Hands like sunburnt plums,
plucking and stroking, green
unopened bolls be damned.
Breast high sack on my back,
bottom dusting ground.
Break a branch,
receive the same back.
First time, they whipped me smart,
sweat stickier than the bushes,
just trying to make a quota,
weigh my worth,
so the masta’ don’t whip me
at day’s end;
laggards get lashes.
The wide blue sky’s
my only playground,
picking against punishment
the wicked white man’s crop,
but in my mind, I’d also hop
cloud to cloud.
In my mind, I’m
free off the ground.
From slavery,
to forced poverty,
to segregation
to poor education,
to decades of underlying hatred,
to not breathing,
to the light of justice,
an open conversation,
tolerance,
acceptance,
and finally a horizon
of sublime adoration.
I smile completely,
knowing my soul
is just a barge
working the water furrows of
today till it’s too dark to see
by the fearful full moon;
but there will be daybreak!
Chores by candlelight tonight,
but true light lies
only puffs ahead.
© 2020 | K.Hartless
It’s Juneteenth. A time to talk candidly about slavery and its impact. This holiday commemorates the freeing of the last slaves in the United States on June 19, 1865. I wanted to reshare a poem that is perhaps controversial.
I wrote it in response to reading the novel, Twelve Years A Slave, originally published in 1853 about the remarkable journey of Solomon Northup. You can read an excerpt here. It taught me that it’s important to remember, even what we do not know ourselves.
Last year, I read Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, which I highly recommend as a Science-Fiction work where a woman is thrust back and forth between modern times and life as a slave.
Artwork: “The Cotton Picker” by Thomas Hart Benton
Yard Sale of Thoughts 
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