The Cotton Road
Teak feet walk the road
in the thin light of dawn.
Red clay between leathery toes,
blistered, cracked and worn.
We sing a song shuffling along
the bone-worn beaten path,
while whips urge the lame and sick
with a harsh crackling snap.
We pass desiccated crowns
of Maple, Poplar and Pine,
marching on to cotton field -
a fertile blood-fed shrine.
My hoe strikes the rocky ground
as pickers snick the cotton,
on we toil, on we toil -
weary, hopeless and forgotten.
I be so glad when the sun goes down
I be so glad when the sun goes down
I ain't all that sleepy but I wanna lie down
I ain't all that sleepy but I wanna lie down
I wanna lie down, I wanna lie down
I reworked this poem inspired by something I wrote over 10 years ago centred around the broad theme of slavery. I researched this subject for my university poetry portfolio in 2006 and spent a month in America travelling in South Carolina, before visiting family in North Carolina. I penned over 200 poems on that trip while visiting various sites, including an old slave plantation. I wrote the first draft of this poem sitting in one of the cotton fields at that place.
Slavery is a subject that beggars belief, especially when you get deep into researching the specifics of the intense cruelty and inhumanity that happened. I spent some time reviewing many of the poems I wrote on that trip and realized that some speak to the inhumanity of slavery in a powerful way. I will be sharing a selection of them on Hive over the next few months. I feel that it is important to remember these types of things, to revisit them and understand them so that the lessons of history are truly learned.
Photo by Social History Archive on Unsplash
As Martin Luther King said:
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!"
The end section of the poem, highlighted in red 'code text' was not originally written by me, but rather quoted from an old song that the plantation workers used to sing on the daily trudge to the cotton fields called I Be So Glad When The Sun Goes Down. I included this as an ending referencing the song the character in my poem mentions they're singing as they walk down the cotton road to the day's toil.
Please see the YouTube recording of this song below.
To me, this song represents humankind's indomitable spirit (in this case how Africans who'd been stolen from their homeland to be put to work 12-13 hour days in the baking heat, managed to sing through their pain and hardship) - it is a bitter truth that we as a species are capable of both acts of such incredible kindness and heinous acts of atrocity.
Thanks for reading and/ or listening 🙂🌿
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If you have enjoyed this spoken word poetry you can find further works on both my SoundCloud Page and my YouTube channel, both writing under the name MainlyPoetry.
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