Blues fallin’ down like hail

Blues fallin’ down like hail

Fried catfish, roasting ears dipped in butter , watermelon , corn liquor 

garnish the jukebox clearing it’s throat with a frozen smile booming out the blues

Mississippi talkin’ to itself in a big quiet voice
red lipped smiling Coca Cola girl gazes down twelve feet high
Thermometers running for the woods to cool off

Greystones in a green sea of cotton warm haze protect Little Robert 

belting out hell hound scales his wooden shack wobbling on its cedar post supports

Slick brown China berry trees hold out clusters of
decaying branches to the Sun
The MissiisipI calmly gazes on murmuring to itself

Long distance mirage like feels good to be alive shimmering cotton field disguises a pool of silver tears as Harp blowers, mandolin sounds, guitar cascades, blue silver cords lighten up a harmonica train chase

a hot moonlit humid midsummer night weeps a 'Death Letter Blues' 32- 20 shotgun tones

The Kate Adams beats the brown belly of mighty river froth
its great paddles filling the sky with black froth
Cathedral like smoke furnaces breath dragon like flares across midnight waters gliding like a swift heavenly chariot

Preachers takin’ over the Churches from folk tradition
gapped scales German toy plays glissen foxhunting howls
locomotive wails blaring trumpet notes

Call and response field hollers
Railroad gang rhythmic hammering
Parchmont farm wooing the Governor in
a ubiquitous apartheid stench

as others Dance and Sing the cotton field blues away
at Saturday night Hootenaneys

All recorded for humanity
'In the Land where Blues Began'

Too far from the Sun !

A mechanical whirring bird
drops Icarus-like into
HIstory
Disbelief
Anger
Grief
Questions
Meaning
Stoical ‘Black Diamond Bay’ believers
Perhaps knowing their Brueghel ?
Maintain a tradition
As I hurry on by.

Pete Burton