Walking past the Crystal Hotel
I saw Jim Martin down on his knees.
He was scraping up mud that had
dried to crust
after the rain mixed with dust Sunday last.
When I got home
I took a good look at the steps
and the porch and the windows.
I saw them with Ma’s eyes and thought about
how she’d been haunting me.
I thought about Ma,
who would’ve washed clothes,
beaten furniture,
aired rugs,
scrubbed floors,
down on her knees,
brush in hand,
breaking that mud
like the farmers break sod,
always watching over her shoulder
for the next duster to roll in.
My stubborn ma,
with my brother Franklin to tend to.
She never could stand a mess.
My father doesn’t notice the dried mud.
Least he never tells me,
not that he tells me much of anything these days.
With Ma gone,
if the mud’s to be busted,
the job falls to me.
It isn’t the work I hate,
the knuckle-breaking work of beating mud out of
every blessed thing,
but every day
my fingers and hands
ache so bad. I think
I should just let them rest,
let the dust rest,
let the world rest.
But I can’t leave it rest,
on account of Ma,
haunting.
January 1935