A mule will be forever loyal if you loyal to them.

A mule never forgets a harsh word or the smack of a hand.

Make working together a fun rewarding activity.

The poem Cane saddens me but, I honestly believe that the vast majority of people who work with mules and horses

do not mistreat their working partners.

Cane

Cleopatra Mathis

When the mule balked, he hit him 

sometimes with the flat of a hand 

upside the head; more often 

the stick he carried did its angry trick. 

The mule's job was to power the press, 

iron on iron that wrung the sugar 

out of cane, circling under the coarse 

beam attached to his shoulders and neck. 

That mule of my childhood 

was black, remained blackly obedient 

as round and round he made himself 

the splintered hand of a clock, the groan 

and squeak of machinery chewing 

the reedy stalks to pulp, each second 

delivering another sweet thin drop 

into the black pot at the center. 

He hit him with a rag, old headrag, 

but the animal winced only with the thrash 

of a cane stalk itself—he squinted 

under the rule of that bamboo. 

The sun was another caning 

on his black-hot flesh. He was slow 

as the blackstrap syrup the boiled sugar made, 

so true to the circle he dragged 

we hardly saw him. We loved the rustling 

house of green cane, blind in that field 

of tropical grasses whose white plumes 

announced the long season's wait. 

We yearned for the six-foot stem, the eventual 

six pieces the machete sliced 

at the joints, then the woody exterior 

peeled back lengthwise with a blade. 

It was a black hand we waited for, his job 

to lay bare the grainy fiber we chewed. 

That juice on our tongues 

was his sweetness at work. 

Chester was his name, he kept the mule.