Zora in Beaufort, 1940
Zora Neal Hurston spent time
in the low country
interviewing & filming
kids on corners & folk at work,
but she actually took the stage
when she went to church.
Around town she heard
of ancestors who escaped
into the swamps living for decades
on raccoon, snakeroot & turtle soup,
all of which Zora recorded,
but in church she sang a song
about a mule on a mountain,
pausing from time to time
to pass along tales & details
about other diasporic Black folk
she encountered in her travels.
From the start the minds
of the listeners wandered over her
church bird attire of snow white
feather dress & delicate eggshell-
shaped bonnet atop a nest of afro
plaits popping like knuckles—
the hair plopped like knotty bowls
of black cotton around the bulbous
trembling egg-like hat
as she sang what sounded like
a fully made-up song a capella
because the organist was unsure
where to touch the keys & petals
between her notes & tales.
“You can start with any verse
& give it any name,” Zora told
the church as the preacher perspired.
The mule’s name was Derrick.
Zora rode him down to town
where she met a Mary whose hips
were so broad Huh!—
“She had a baby blacker than black
with sky blue eyes. Mary told her
Mamma it must have been the devil.
She told her daddy it must have been
the Lord in disguise. Lord, Lord
he had blue eyes, Huh!—
When they bulldoze the graveyards
in these parts, they’ll find the hair
of the dead turned to cotton,” Zora said
momentarily sounding like a Sunday
school teacher before resuming
her anthropological story-song testimony,
“The birds will still be hollering
at the sky. Lord, Lord the crows will cry.
You may go but this song will bring you back.
You like my peaches, but you don’t like me.
Don’t you shake my tree,” Zora sang
suddenly fluttering to a new song
or speaking directly to God, “You may go
but this song will bring you back.”
From start to finish, we were dumbstruck
by her outfit of snow-white feathers
& that damn eggshell hat.
Source: Poetry (December 2025)