NaPoWriMo #16: soundtrack

A few years back I saw O Brother, Where Art Thou? for the first time. Ordinarily I can take or leave the Cohen Brothers (loved The Hudsucker Proxy and Intolerable Cruelty; The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona, not so much).

Maybe it was because O Brother, Where Art Thou is based on Homer's Odyssey and I'm a sucker for The Odyssey, which I still managed to enjoy even while translating it from Latin my sophomore year in high school... I'm not sure. But I loved the fanciful update of a great story. I loved George Clooney's manic lip-synching to "Man of Constant Sorrow". I loved Pete getting "loved up and turned into a horny toad." And I especially loved the tins of Dapper Dan pomade and cows swirling through flood waters. But most of all, I loved the soundtrack, which I promptly went out and paid, well, almost full price for (I bought it at Costco).

Tonight Jim and I were watching In Plain Sight, one of our new favorite shows, which is just starting its second season. At the end of the episode, one of the tracks from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack—my favorite track—started to roll. And I suddenly felt inspired.


O sinners let's go down
Let's go down, come on down
O sinners let's go down
Down in the river to pray

—“Down to the River to Pray”, Traditional Baptist Hymn


Down in the River

A smoky sweet autumn wind
weaves along river’s bank
caresses aspen leaves turned gold
coaxes maple leaves turned scarlet
gentles them down in slow spirals
through willow’s weeping tendrils
to catch shifting shafts of honey light
as trees bow in the breeze

I’m bowing in the breeze
gentled down low to weeping
coaxed to kneel broken-hearted
clothed in scarlet as I wait
leaves caressing my hair
carpeting the grass and dusty shore
under my knees and feet
how long till I give way

how long till leaves and grass give way
to smooth cool of riverbed rocks
under my bare soles
under my knees
till I give myself to living waters
washing dust from my feet and hands and mouth
till I float white-clad down the river
hair fanning out behind me
with maple and aspen spiraling above?