Sugar Blues

Why don’t she act right?

Why don’t he do right?

Where they going if not wrong?

Up there’s the three-cornered shelf
we put each other on, broken shelf
hanging in the dusk by a thread,
O sugar, don’t give me up for dead

Go out of a morning to cut the cane,
to thin the trees, pitch the hay high,
do a day’s work for a dollar’s pay,
bring it all home under the moon.

Feel my body fit itself around you,
climb up here, go down all the way
to the bottom, you can find me
where I been waiting all day.

O woman, you see me like this,
I got to get inside to give you
sugar with a little salt for taste
to bring out what’s sweet in you.

Where you gonna be tomorrow?

Where will you be going today?

Why do we begin and end with a song?

(21, 30 May 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander