The Rope and the Sun

These last few days of skipping have found the sun beaming down on my back.  I have been removing my shirt, allowing my dark brown skin to breath, greased with sweat it pours in excessiveness, shinning and reflecting the surrounding buildings, whose residents momentarily look at the unfamiliar site panting in front of them.  I still look like an athlete, so the gazes of often for a moment - a person is simply working out.

Around me I have shade, though I don't use it.   There are places to hide from the rays, but the rays make me reference and give me history.  The rays speak of consistency, impermanence, they have been there, and I am the one who will come and go.  Just as it has been, it was there at that specific point in time - yes, that time.  It has shown also on other backs, whose skins were also reflective .  

I beat the ground with my bear feet like a preacher's sermon, the vocabulary often distant, but pounding clear and direct.  The ground made softer with each skip, the soft dirt softer with each whip of the rope, the fine dust settling on my ankles, while the hard pebbles bounce off a near by tree.   The sermon is heard by those who choose to listen, its deliverance aids me, and guides me.  The sermon is a conversation with history.  I feel they listen as I listen to the pounding of bare feet, jumping as if in a trance, as if reaching towards some Gods.

The sun makes me think of work, and the worked.  The rope continues to whip the ground and the marks penetrate layer by layer of dirt, and that fine dirt makes the bottom of my feet feel softer, yet it is all to make them harder, for tomorrow I will continue.  The sermon must continue, the histories must accost me, my feet mus endure.