Prayer of the Ivory-Handled Knife
Susan
Carver, 1971
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 in 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 think you?
Nelson, M. (2001). Prayer of the ivory-handled knife. Carver: A life in Poems (pp.11-12). Asheville, NC: Front Street.
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, 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 then 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 then 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 letter
in the bureau, tied with a bow.
He always sends a dried flower.
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 bigger. I don’t know about
all that. But he’s the best
washwoman in town.
Nelson, M. (2001). Washboard Wizard. Carver: A life in Poems (pp.18). Asheville, NC: Front Street.
Chemistry 101
A canvas apron over his street clothes,
Carver leads his chemistry class into
the college dump. The students follow, a claque
of ducklings hatched by hens. Where he
sees a retort, a Bunsen burner,
a mortar, zinc sulfate, they see
a broken bowl, a broken lantern,
a rusty old flatiron, a fruit jar top.
Their tangle of twine, his lace.
He turns, a six-inch length of copper tubing
in one hand. “Now what can we do with this?”
Two by two, little lights go on.
One by hesitant one, dark hands are raised.
The waters of imagining, their element.
Nelson, M. (2001). Chemistry 101. Carver: A life in Poems (pp. 37). Asheville, NC: Front Street.