Birth of Cotton Working Canvas and Finished Painting

The Birth of Cotton Unfinished Canvas

With many new followers, I decided to make a reentry on “The Birth of Cotton” painting.  This working canvas begins (2012) after a poem that I had written about my Native American father call “The Chickasaw Farmer”.

The Birth of Cotton

20 X 20 Acrylic

The above is the finished painting and I have included the poem with this post.  This is one of my favorite paintings; I hope “My Community” will enjoy seeing the painting and the poem that inspired the painting.

The Chickasaw Farmer

“A tribute to Daddy”

Rickety ole man stood on the cotton wagon

a tin of yellow salve in his hand.

Rickety Ole Wagon

Rickety Ole Man

A hot southern sun hides behind the willows on

muddy Flint Creek, cotton pickers sweat falling

on parched lips taste like salty brine while they

wait for the Ole man to call “quitting time”.

Rickety Ole Wagon
Rickety Ole Man

Young, old, children, women and men bloody

fingers cut by the barbs of the cotton boll dig

into the old yellow salve tin.

Rickety Ole Wagon
Rickety Ole Man

Tar bottom sacks filled with soft white gold

weary feet follow two old sway back mules

down a rutted road.

Rickety Ole Wagon
Rickety Ole Man

Crimson clouds from wagon wheels whirl

around tired bodies and drained minds;

feels like pickers were working in the

cotton fields since the beginning of time.

Rickety Ole Wagon
Rickety Ole Man

Mules stop at the fork of the road as the

cotton pickers walked into the dark of

the night the Ole man’s heart filled with

appreciation, because he is just an old

Chickasaw farmer trying to survive

inside a “White Nation”.

Rickety Ole Wagon

Rickety Ole Man

©2013.annjohnsonmurphree

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