Oh Lord, this world makes your children cry
Oh Lord, this world makes your children cry

Sally’s mother used to sing while she picked cotton
in the lonely field of Oklahoma.
She picked cotton the day before Sally was born
and was back in the fields a day after,
the newborn nearby with a cousin in the shade.
As Sally got older, she would sing with her mother,
listening to her voice drift through the persimmon trees.

Sally’s mother died when she was ten,
leaving her behind to her mother’s sisters
who were already settled with homes, families, and mouths to feed.
So she was shuttled from one relative to another,
from Broken Bow to Checotah, Bixby to Altus
existing as one more burden to those without much
until Sally got a job as a housekeeper at Fort Sill and found herself a soldier boy.

He, of course, went off to the war in 1944,
left her behind with a child on the way.
She bused tables, wiped down chairs, and waited for the day
when the telegram arrived to tell her he had died.
Then Sally sang as she took in washing, washed dishes,
and waited in her hollow picket-fenced house for the time
when she would deliver the last link of joy from her husband.

Oh Lord, this world makes your children cry

Sarah Mae entered the world in May of 45,
and her mother was no longer alive to hear
the baby cry as she was huddled in a blanket
and given to a couple who promised the nurse
To teach the babe her mother’s last whispered words -

Jesus, please dry
their weeping eyes.