…..and was it worth it
after all
after all of these poems
dropped in the night,
metaphors,
images of this cat or that cat,
memories of
sunshine,
blind,
kind,
or just hot and sweaty,
lying there in some blog,
some rag like
sand in a shoe,
blue like blues,
red like blood,
yellow like the sunshine.
I followed the plow,
the dirt piled over the plants,
I uncovered,
and my grandfather worked the mule,
Gee for right,
Haw for left,
and I am now as stubborn as that mule
and my halter has made callouses
and I scrape my mule hoof
in the dirt
and I strain against the plow.
My grandmother brought
lemonade to the field
and rang a bell at noon.
I still listen for the bell
but it is silent
and the house is
gone,
but I remember the field
and the slap of the harness
and I can still see the water jar
wrapped in paper in the shade
of time itself.
and was it worth it after all
to have written it down in a box
on a page of magnetic spots
that glow ones and zeros like a firefly
in the night.
david michael jackson
