Mudbone Jones

Mudbone Jones

(Fordyce, Arkansas 1963)

 

A century mark of swelter heat

provoked the dipping of his hand

into his tattered back pocket.

There, in a crumpled ball

of pressed cotton

was the answer to

the summer’s stubbornness.

Slowly drawn across the brow

to wipe away the sting.

Mudbone squinted

through cataracted-eyes

from beneath the canopy

of downtown buildings.

Another generation passes,

as countless ones before,

and stare at his toothless,

black-face grin.

Bibbed overalls,

some thirty years old,

dangle from his boney frame.

The pocket now holds

a marble and a gnawed toothpick.

Half-laced boots,

once covered with mud,

bedeck his corned and callous feet,

shriveled with age.

Trickles of sweat gently glide

down his stubbled cheek and neck.

Mudbone, Mudbone Jones.

Keeper of the past,

a spirit of a different day.

Once was seen a dusty street,

now paved through the course of time.

No horses or buggies

that clopped along their way,

just a Buick or Ford.

White hair reveals

this weathered mans age;

ol’ sage.

Crooked fingers, with nails

split to the quick

and scars from a thousand cuts,

unable to be straightened

on this bedeviled day.

“Good day Mr. Jones,”

a voice echoes from beyond eyes view.

The simmering south,

the only home known.

“Swing low sweet chariot”

drips from his lips

that are cracked and dry,

Mudbone Jones winks his eye.