Black Mud Of The Small Sea Poem by Maria Pilar Conn

There they sit, covered in black mud,
small, chubby, old Mediterranean people.
Sitting with their chairs in the shore,
the sea coming in and wetting their legs.
The women sit in groups,
some have the black mud on their faces,
laughing about what women laugh about when together.
The little men also sit together,
every once in a while,
they look over at the women and shout.
The women crack up laughing,
the black mud splitting along their faces.
Other groups stand around the mud pit.
They are looking at an old man bent over,
digging mud out and placing it in a bucket.
He is talking all the time, gesticulating,
with his free hand.
No one seems to be listening to what he says.
The sun burns my white skin.
A withered old woman with only two teeth,
that I can see,
grabs me by the arm with claws instead of hands,
pushing me into the circle of women by the pit.
They all start talking at once,
slapping on me black stinking mud,
because it does smell,
like a sea gone dead,
over my back, arms and legs.
I feel dizzy hearing their loud chatter,
pushing my body this way and that.
Finally they are done,
they laugh at my bewilderment,
as they cast me out adrift,
free of the womb a second time,
and just as lost.