Carver Read online

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARILYN NELSON

  The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (1997)

  Magnificat (1994)

  Partial Truth (1992)

  The Homeplace (1990)

  Mama’s Promises (1985)

  For the Body (1978)

  The Cat Walked Through the Casserole and Other Poems for Children (1984) with Pamela Espeland

  Hundreds of Hens and Other Poems for Children by Halfdan Rasmussen (1982) translated from the Danish by Marilyn Nelson Waniek and Pamela Espeland

  Copyright © 2016, 2001 by Marilyn Nelson

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact [email protected].

  Printed in the United States of America

  Designed by Helen Robinson

  First Word Song e-book edition, 2016

  25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nelson, Marilyn

  Carver: a life in poems / Marilyn Nelson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-886910-53-9 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-587-4 (e-book)

  1. Carver, George Washington, 1864?–1943—Poetry. 2. Afro-American agriculturists—Poetry. 3. Agriculturists—Poetry. 4. American poetry.

  [1. Carver, George Washington, 1864?–1943—Poetry. 2. Afro Americans—Poetry. 3. Agriculturists—Poetry. 4. American poetry.]

  I. Title

  PS3573.A4795 C37 2001

  811’.54-dc2100-063624

  H1.1

  WordSong

  An Imprint of Highlights

  815 Church Street

  Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

  Again, and always: for Jake and Dora

  I should appreciate it very much if the memory of the great scientist George W. Carver would be honored …

  — Albert Einstein

  To let oneself seem inferior to what one is is the supreme attribute of virtue.

  — Leo Tolstoy

  I thoroughly understand that there are scientists to whom the world is merely the result of chemical forces or material electrons. I do not belong to this class.

  — George Washington Carver

  A personal relationship with the Great Creator of all things is the only foundation for the abundant life. The farther we get away from self, the greater life will be.

  — George Washington Carver

  I will be with you in power.

  — George Washington Carver

  Contents

  Out of “Slave’s Ransom”

  Prayer of the Ivory-Handled Knife

  Watkins Laundry and Apothecary

  Drifter

  The Perceiving Self

  Washboard Wizard

  Old Settlers’ Reunion

  A Ship Without a Rudder

  The Prayer of Miss Budd

  The Last Rose of Summer

  Four a.m. in the Woods

  Cafeteria Food

  Curve-Breaker

  The Nervous System of the Beetle

  Green-Thumb Boy

  Cercospora

  A Charmed Life

  Called

  My People

  Odalisque

  Chemistry 101

  Dawn Walk

  From an Alabama Farmer

  Coincidence

  Bedside Reading

  Poultry Husbandry

  1905

  Clay

  Egyptian Blue

  The Sweet-Hearts

  A Patriarch’s Blessing

  The Lace-Maker

  Chicken-Talk

  The Joy of Sewing

  Veil-Raisers

  The Year of the Sky-Smear

  The New Rooster

  How a Dream Dies

  Out of the Fire

  The Wild Garden

  The Dimensions of the Milky Way

  Ruellia Noctiflora

  Professor Carver’s Bible Class

  Goliath

  House Ways and Means

  Arachis Hypogaea

  Lovingly Sons

  Friends in the Klan

  My Dear Spiritual Boy

  “God’s Little Workshop”

  Eureka

  My Beloved Friend

  Driving Dr. Carver

  The Penol Cures

  Letter to Mrs. Hardwick

  Baby Carver

  Mineralogy

  Last Talk with Jim Hardwick

  Moton Field

  Author’s Acknowledgments

  Publisher’s Acknowledgments

  List of Poems

  Photography Credits

  Notes on First Publication

  Out of “Slave’s Ransom”

  John Bentley, Diamond Grove, Missouri

  There’s a story to the name.

  Had her since I was a colt myself.

  Oh, I was a wild one,

  up to my withers in oats, and

  when Moses Carver comes to me

  and begs me to go after

  their slave-girl Mary and her son,

  well, I never was one

  to turn down good money.

  Tracked the bushwhackers

  two days south of here

  and caught up with them

  down in Arkansas: The girl,

  already sold, had left them

  holding a bundle of wet rags,

  convulsive with fever and shook

  by the whooping cough.

  They were glad

  to be shut of him.

  When I handed him to Missus Carver,

  you never seen such carrying-on.

  All that over a puny black baby.

  You’d have thought that Mary

  was her sister or something.

  Carver give me his best filly

  as a reward.

  Many’s the winnings I’ve toasted

  thanks to her and her colts.

  This one’s her fifteenth.

  Look at the clean lines,

  the sleekness, the self-respect.

  His dam’s a quarter Arabian,

  and when you see him run you’ll swear

  he was sired by the wind.

  c. 1864

  Carver is born in Diamond Grove, Missouri. His mother, Mary, is a slave owned by Moses and Susan Carver; Mary has an older son, Jim. Shortly after George’s birth, Mary and George are stolen; Moses Carver hires John Bentley to find them. Bentley finds only the infant.

  Prayer of the Ivory-Handled Knife

  Susan Carver, 1871

  Father, you have given us,

  instead of our own children, your

  and Mary’s orphans, Jim and George.

  What would you have us make

  of them? What

  kind of freedom

  can we raise them to?

  They will always be strangers

  in this strange, hate-filled land.

  Jim is a big help to Moses:

  Thank you for their joined laughter

  like morning mist over new-plowed fields.

  And our little plant-doctor:

  Now he’s crushing leaves and berries

  and painting sanded boards.

  Thank you

  for his profusion of roses

  on our bedroom wall,

  for his wildflower bouquet

  in the sitting room,

  his apples and pears beside the stove.

  He ran out before breakfast,

  saying he’d dreamed last night

  of that pocket knife he’s been

  asking us and praying for.

  A few minutes later he ran back up

  from the garden, calling

  Aunt Sue! Aunt Sue!

  He’d found it i
n a watermelon,

  ivory-handled,

  exactly as he had dreamed.

  Seemed like he all but flew

  into my arms.

  Oh, Father, gracious Lord:

  How shall I thank you?

  George and his brother, Jim (c. 1873). George (left) was frail and small for his age. Jim was a few years older and strong and husky.

  Watkins Laundry and Apothecary

  Mariah Watkins, Neosho, Missouri

  Imagine a child at your door,

  offering to do your wash,

  clean your house, cook,

  to weed your kitchen garden

  or paint you a bunch of flowers

  in exchange for a meal.

  A spindly ten-year-old, alone

  and a stranger in town, here to go

  to our school for colored children.

  His high peep brought tears:

  sleeping in a barn and all that,

  nary mama nor kin,

  but only white folks

  he left with their blessing,

  his earthly belongings

  in a handkerchief tied to a stick.

  I’ve brought a houseful of children

  into this world, concentrating on

  that needle’s eye into eternity.

  But ain’t none of them children mine.

  Well, of course I moved him on in.

  He helped me with my washings,

  brought me roots from the woods

  that bleached them white folks’ sheets

  brighter than sunshine. He could fill

  a canning jar with leaves and petals

  so when you lifted the lid

  a fine perfume flooded your senses.

  White bodices and pantalettes danced

  around George on my line.

  He was sweet with the neighbor children.

  Taught the girls to crochet.

  Showed the boys

  a seed he said held a worm

  cupped hands warmed so it wriggled and set

  the seed to twitching.

  Gave them skills and wonders.

  Knelt with me at bedtime.

  He was the child the good Lord gave

  and took away before I got more

  than the twinkle of a glimpse

  at the man he was going to be.

  It happened one Saturday afternoon.

  George was holding a black-eyed Susan,

  talking about how the seed

  this flower grew from

  carried a message from a flower

  that bloomed a million years ago,

  and how this flower

  would send the message on

  to a flower that was going to bloom

  in a million more years.

  Praise Jesus, I’ll never forget it.

  He left to find a teacher that knew

  more than he knew.

  I give him my Bible.

  I keep his letters

  in the bureau, tied with a bow.

  He always sends a dried flower.

  Carver’s school slate

  1877

  With the blessing of his foster parents, Moses and Susan Carver, George moves to Neosho, about eight miles from Diamond Grove, to attend the closest school for Negro children. This begins his long search for an education.

  Drifter

  Something says find out

  why rain falls, what makes corn proud

  and squash so humble, the questions

  call like a train whistle so at fourteen,

  fifteen, eighteen, nineteen still on half-fare,

  over the receding landscapes the perceiving self

  stares back from the darkening window.

  George Washington Carver (c. 1879)

  The Perceiving Self

  Fort Scott, Kansas, 1879

  The first except birds

  who spoke to us, his voice high

  and lilting as a meadowlark’s,

  with an undertone of windsong,

  many-petaled as the meadow,

  the music shaped and colored

  by brown lips, white teeth, pink tongue.

  Walking slowly, he talked to us,

  touched our stamens,

  pleasured us with pollen.

  Then he squealed, a field mouse taken

  without wingbeat,

  with no shadow.

  His yellow feet crushed past, running,

  his bare legs bruised, he trampled, his spew

  burned, his scalding urine.

  The icedrift of silence.

  Smoke from a torched deadman, barking laughter

  from the cottonwoods at the creek.

  1879

  Carver witnesses a lynching, Fort Scott, Kansas.

  Washboard Wizard

  Highland, Kansas, 1885

  All of us take our clothes to Carver.

  He’s a wizard with a washboard,

  a genie of elbow grease and suds.

  We’ll take you over there next week;

  by that time you’ll be needing him.

  He’s a colored boy, a few years older

  than we are, real smart. But he stays

  in his place. They say

  he was offered a scholarship

  to the college. I don’t know

  what happened, but they say

  that’s why he’s here in town.

  Lives alone, in a little shack

  filled with books

  over in Poverty Row.

  They say he reads them.

  Dried plants, rocks, jars of colors.

  A bubbling cauldron of laundry.

  Pictures of flowers and landscapes.

  They say he

  painted them. They say

  he was turned away when he got here,

  because he’s a nigger. I don’t know about

  all that. But he’s the best

  washwoman in town.

  Old Settlers’ Reunion

  Ness County, Kansas

  When I filed my claim back in April eighty-six,

  this country weren’t nothing but prairie grass,

  rippling pink, blue, and yellow flowers

  as far as the eye could squint.

  Six years I cut tough turf from dawn

  to way past suppertime, and drove my team back

  to the sod house and barn

  my first bride and I built together

  like children playing with blocks.

  Three of my children were born there.

  I had two hundred acres, mostly in wheat.

  To my north was Bothwick, to my south, Barnd.

  To my east,

  well, there’s a story to tell.

  Every other homesteader for counties around

  had at least a wife, and most had families.

  And all of us were white

  except for the colored boy, George.

  I think his name was Carver.

  He kept to himself, pretty much,

  but was always sort of joyous when you met, and humble,

  like he’d just been told

  the most marvelous, flattering joke.

  He took in wash when he was more

  hard up than usual, and played the accordion

  so your feet didn’t know where

  your backside was going.

  We never talked much. He lasted a couple of years,

  then Lennon bought his hundred and sixty acres.

  Sometimes, in the half-light of a winter’s morning, I heard

  George’s clear tenor like a church bell over the snow.

  1883

  Carver attends high school in Minneapolis, Kansas. He adds a middle initial to his name to distinguish himself from a man in town with the same name; when asked what the “W.” stands for, he jokingly answers, “Washington.” He joins the Presbyterian Church.

  1884

  He is rejected because of his race by Highland College, Highland, Kansas.


  1886

  He homesteads on the “sod house frontier” in Ness County, Kansas.

  A Ship Without a Rudder

  Helen Milholland, Winterset, Iowa, 1890

  A new voice in church. I turned around to look.

  A colored boy, high-cheeked and handsome,

  his head thrown back, his eyes closed,

  a well-groomed mustache. Well, it was love,

  so to speak, at first sight. I asked John

  to speak to him after the service. He was tall,

  slender, shabbily dressed but clean

  and well-smelling. He wore a snapdragon,

  I remember it was yellow and purple,

  in his lapel. When our eyes met,

  I knew it was mutual. But he looked

  at John, and at everyone else

  who welcomed him in the doorway,

  with the same forever.

  We asked him home,

  talked with him. Then John,

  my dearest John, I’d never known

  such pride in him: Yes you will

  go to college; yes you will

  get an education; God

  has something big

  in store for you; I’ll talk

  to the president of Simpson College

  myself if I have to.

  When my eyes met John’s

  just after he spoke those words,

  that was when I knew,

  I mean really, really, truly knew,

  I meant what I said when I married him.

  The Milholland family

  The Prayer of Miss Budd

  Simpson College, Iowa, 1890

  I’d known he was enrolled, but still

  the sight of a sepia boy

  trembled my foundations,

  I must admit. Thanks

  for your patience.

  They say each teacher

  gets one student. Thanks

  for giving me mine. Already

  I’ve sent him home three times

  with ague: Please watch over him.

  When they found out he was living

  on prayer and five cents’ worth

  of beef suet and cornmeal,

  so many of our good

  Simpson boys gave him

  their laundry I’m afraid

  for his delicate health.

  Keep him warm this winter.

  He says he paints to reveal truth,