How modest is rice

Graceful grass heavy with seeds

The grain of the world

 A current so swift

It will surely reach the sea

All is swept downstream

Consecutively

Measuring their lives in steps

They keep following

 

 You once danced with him

You were young - too long ago

But he knows the song

 Strengths can be weakness 

Virtues on which we rely

Are bane in surfeit

 O the difference

Could souls be seen more surely

Than the binding flesh

 The blues are the roots

Of music's ancestral tree

All the rest is fruit

Waiting for respect

 They are camped at the border

Where will their lives start?

 Shimmy and shake it

Get over to the juke joint

Dance your cares away

 I won some - lost some

Some that I can't remember

Few that I regret

The animals know

Our thankless dominium

Is a delusion

Culture must be mad

To misconstrue fear with truth 

Destruction with might

 Listen to the woods

Carefully though they whisper

They have tales to tell

 I'm built for comfort

I like to take it easy

I'm not built for speed

 I would like to meet

The child that gave me this life

Just once, to thank him

 We've been here before

Where end is the beginning

We know this story

 She comes home at dawn

Wrinkled and smelling of night

Will the house be locked

 A hawk flies over

A mouse dangling in its clutch

Pigeons flee in fear

Cookin' a picnic

Yeah, we gonna jump awhile

To the fife and drums

Otha Turner was one of the great Mississippi cane fife players. The attached link will give you a taste of his life and music.

https://vimeo.com/158052541

 My best shirt is old

Faded and frayed - it knows me

Like a trusted friend

 On a well-thumbed page

A verse that is often read

But seldom heeded

Full many a bloom

Consecrated by the bees

Blush from the blessing

 They slept on the floor

Underneath the line of fire

Sheltered by terror

 A wave needs no name

Gathering - rolling - plunging

Like credence in time

A premonition 

Of tempests beyond the tides

From the ocean's heart

 Hungered hummingbird

Hovers at every color

It's always athirst

They're all about me

Interminable stories

None is about me

Words in the forest

Pathetic jurisdiction 

Nature shan't be split

 

Don't accept slander

Whence you do not seek counsel

Defer to your heart

It is so tempting

A pie on the windowsill

Almost cool enough

 With her chariot

Did Eos spread the new day

 How the heavens blushed