Plowing - Poem

African American Review, Summer, 2002 by Constance Quarterman Bridges

PLOWING

Austin Fray (Dec. 8, 1875-Oct. 24, 1924)

"What did your mother tell you
about our poppa?" (Aunt Edna)

My mother said her poppa
was a wall of a man
was a brick mason, helped build
the school at Stony Point
had a lap large enough
for all of his children and more.
Her poppa could predict rain
like the animals could
was a farmer who loved the smell
and feel of the hard red

Virginia clay
had learned to make it yield
the best crops and stock.
Mother thought her poppa
must have known God personally
for God had made her poppa fair.
She thinks it was the earth
that killed him young
or maybe the old women still with
African ways and African thoughts.

The women said her poppa
was too good, was too fair
for a mortal man,
said he'd better watch
not be too great, the gods
are jealous of greatness in men.
On a cold, crimson October day
Mother watched him plowing his fields.
He plowed in rhythm like a symphony.
He plowed to music he hummed.

Her poppa was followed by Jeff, his dog,
was followed by the hired stranger
followed step by step in soft earth.
Even in the rain her poppa plowed
and the stranger followed
step by step in soft earth.
In the morning her poppa
did not rise with the rooster's crow,
her mother's screams,
or the old women's cries.

At her poppa's funeral, my mother
vowed to warn all the men
she would ever love, never trust
smiles of gods, or plow too long,
or walk in soft earth, or let a stranger
follow. The old women say, strangers
mark your grave when they follow
your footsteps in soft, plowed ground.
Mother says, maybe, for good men,
all ground is soft.

Constance Quarterman Bridges is a New Jersey poet and the recipient of a 1999 New Jersey Arts Council Fellowship. She has also been named the Geraldine R. Dodge poet. She recently completed a manuscript about her ancestors, Lions Don't Eat Us, poems based on her mother's journal.