He might not ever tell it to the papers
but I’m the first person Isaac ever see ride

I’m the first person he watch
get up ‘for dawn
fill a tub wit scaldin’ water, soap
an dirty clothes

lock everything ‘tween my knees
bend over an grab somethin by its ears
an race it up an down the washboard
til I baptize the dirt right out

everybody ride the hell outta something

I seen a good preacher ride a church
full a people with his words alone

have us all talkin back to him
while he trot us along an teach
straight from the word a God

once he work up a rhythm
some a us gets up on our feets an urge him on
like our “amens” is whips
an our “go ahead on preacher” is spurs

directly he turned a corner an left the page
his tongue started to gallop an he rode hard and fast
all the way til the end a the sermon

when the church finally say amen
we was all soaked through with sweat,
an more exhausted
than any horse an rider I ever seen

"Come Sunday Its Derby" is from I Dedicate This Ride: The Making of Isaac Murphy.

When folks find out I’m him
they always want to know what I say to 'em.
If they be white I tell 'em I say,

Run an run quick
or they gone feed you to the niggers.
An they usually laugh an leave me be.

If they be black I tell them the truth.
I tell them how I cup my hand to a horse’s ear
how I let it catch some wind so they remember

what it sound like to run full out
to know you not just a field hand or a work horse
but beautiful, an strong an smart.

I don’t never have to ask them to honor something
you can’t really see just feel.
I just nudge ‘em like they exhausted mammas do

soon as they are born an licked dry
until they unfold them wobbly legs an stand.
When I’m up there, I rub my hands against their neck,

lean into their ear, pretend I’m the wind, an whisper,
“Find your purpose. Find your purpose” and hold on.

"Murphy’s Secret" is from I Dedicate This Ride: The Making of Isaac Murphy.

When my Isaac is traveling and I start to miss him
I polish silver to pass the time. Not some rich white lady’s
eight-piece place setting, but my own.

When no one is watching, I line up gravy ladles, hooded asparagus
servers, big banquet spoons, and our matching salt cellar
and peppercorn grinder on our dining room table

then I pretend I’m trackside at the big race. I get dressed up
if it’s a derby, and add two of the big silver candle holders
to fancy up the track.

The salt always takes off first with pepper close behind.
Isaac is always aboard my favorite spoon, a wedding gift
from my mother and pacing on everybody’s heels.

I move every piece all the way around the table from start
to finish, one and two at a time until every piece is neck and neck
and galloping down the stretch of white linen table cloth.

I don’t have to tell you which piece of silver always wins,
even if I’m mad at him for not taking me along. He bought this big house
so I could enjoy it, but its only home when he’s here too.

"Silver Stakes" is from I Dedicate This Ride: The Making of Isaac Murphy.

The first time I put my hands on a horse
I pretend like I’m touching a woman
or brushing my Mamma’s hair, except I make sure

none of the ugly I might be carrying around is riding with me.
Before I step foot in a stall, I might even stop gather myself
in the quiet morning air close my eyes and picture

my Lucy sleeping or Mamma peeling apples or both of them
sitting with their feet in the creek and laughing.
It’s a lot like prayer only I ain’t asking for nothing
but for God to lift my burdens right off of my hands

so that my touch is like a mother’s kiss like a baptism even.
I just want the horse to know my heart is clean to feel
all my respect, no fear and nothing of the heaviness or darkness
that follow even good men around like a tail do the head.

"Groom" is from I Dedicate This Ride: The Making of Isaac Murphy.

When I’m up there dodging mud and sprinting to the post
I don’t think about winning. Don’t think the horse do either.
I can’t even hear the crowd cussing me hard and loud

for leading my mount pass their first or second choice.
I never consider how easy it is to fall out of the saddle.
How trying to dodge the thunder ‘n lightning

of a thoroughbred’s hoofs would be like tiptoeing through
a cotton gin. When a thousand pounds of horse
is on the other end, your rib cage is just a bird’s nest,

your head no safer than a watermelon kissing a knife.
It takes runaway-slave nerve to risk riding that fast and fall,
but it takes more to just lay still and leave it up to the horses
to see you curled up in the mud and step around you.

"Horseshoes Only Lucky When They Miss" is from I Dedicate This Ride: The Making of Isaac Murphy.

I don’t remember any shackles. I remember Mamma always singing
and daddy whistling out the door in the half-light of morning
returning to us almost mute after the tobacco barn swallowed the sun.

I didn’t know what it meant to be worked like a dog but I knew
it had something to do with being too dog gone tired to eat

I have this memory of mamma handing me a tied up old rag
and sending me to a field where daddy was driving a mule team.
He was sweating so hard it looked like he’d been standing in the rain.

I remember how he hummed when he unwrapped mamma’s gift biscuit
and bacon scraps, the moaning sounds he made with every slow bite
and the song on his lips when he finished. I remember him shooing me

out of the shade he’d told me to stand in and on back to the cabin,
his clucking and chatter with the mules, the sound of their stubbornness
and mine, but mostly I remember the songs.

"I Thought Slavery Was A Song" is from I Dedicate This Ride: The Making of Isaac Murphy.

“The head must bow and the back will have to bend,
wherever the darky may go…”
-My Old Kentucky Home original lyrics

Isaac Murphy

Seems like every parlor I visit has one of Foster’s “Plantation Melodies
as sung by Christy’s Minstrels” out on display. I’m afraid of what it is
refined white folks hear in the lyrics that gets them so full of tears

when they sing that song. They replaced all the parts
about Poor Uncle Tom with My Old Kentucky Home and changed
the title, but its still about a slave expressing sorrow for being sold

down the river. It’s still about a man, separated from his loved ones,
now toiling in sugar cane fields. I hope what the good in them hear
is a man, missing his family and his humble cabin, that they are not pining

for their comfortable days of life as southern royalty, of being waited on
hand and foot, of being so far up at the top, they couldn’t see
that it was poor colored folks in bondage that they were standing on.

If I’m wrong, and I pray that I’m not, then that white sheet music
is just a more sophisticated way of waving the Confederate flag.

"Oh Weep No More Today" is from I Dedicate This Ride: The Making of Isaac Murphy.

When I come barreling down the stretch, I always think
about my daddy, a runaway slave turned soldier.
At the start of every race, I pretend he’s in the crowd,

standing at attention, watching me ride for the first time,
his brass belt buckle gleaming like his proud mouth.
I tell myself, I don’t dare lose that this race is for the union,

for all ex-slaves who joined up, who stole away with their families.
Those fathers showed us what real men do, taught us about sacrifice,
dug trenches, carried supplies and ate a whole lot of rebel bullets

just so they could keep the freedom they hungered so much for.
Just so their children could dream. So I could ride horses and enjoy
true quiet and these visits with him in the middle of all this noise.

"I Dedicate This Ride" is from I Dedicate This Ride: The Making of Isaac Murphy.