Samuel Washington Allen Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Danielle Legros Georges
Joyce Wilson is editor of The Poetry Porch, a literary magazine on the Internet since 1997. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, among them Alabama Literary Review, The Hudson Review, and Mezzo Cammin. Her chapbook The Need for a Bridge and a full-length collection Take and Receive were both published in 2019. Her poem “The Other and the One” won the Roberts Memorial Prize with The Lyric in 2022. She presented “On Spring Valley Road,” a call and response poem, at the Spring Valley AME Church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, on June 18, 2022, to commemorate its restoration.
THE OCTAGONAL SCHOOLHOUSE
A sequence of poems
Lesson on Paradise
Old Testament: the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve as its first inhabitants
Etymology from the Iranian: an enclosed garden
New Testament: after death, a Christian place of redemption
Mythology: a state of extreme bliss
Mythology: an inclusive space under Divine Love
Social mythology: an exclusive place that can be managed to keep others out
He Arrived on Foot
We did not know about the plantation
in Delaware, where those who left would have
come all the way by foot, across state lines
and into Eastern Pennsylvania.
How long before he found the church, the preacher
who would help him find his way, who came
from Wilmington, the couple from Virginia,
the blacksmith and his son from Arkansas?
And was the land just where they said, and his
To buy with savings no one knew about?
And did he find the deed, know where to sign?
His King James Bible opened, would he sit
before he worked, and plan what he would grow?
And did he trust he’d not be driven out?
Where trees were free to spread their limbs as far
as they could reach, he’d have to watch for sun.
He’d send his children to the public school,
required by law since 1891,
where they would not be taught about the place
he came from, the Delaware plantation.
The Mower
1. Through the School Bus Window (1958)
The school bus window framed the scene.
We watched the mower glide across the field
and down along the fence and recognized
the driver at the wheel of his machine,
a tractor with its seat high off the ground
on tires that were as tall as tall men’s shoulders,
heard the engine’s whir, its steady sound,
saw the tooth-edged blade release and drop
to comb the bank and make the roadside swath.
He rode with ease until the plot was cut ––
his morning work was done, or so we thought.
He’d missed a clump of daisies by the gate.
2. By the Schoolhouse Gate (1964)
One day he waited by the schoolhouse gate.
I could count the layers of his clothing,
the overcoat, the heavy overalls,
the denim work shirt buttoned to the chin.
I saw his smile beneath his fur-trimmed hat.
What secret knowledge bound him with that smile?
What burned within to fill him up with warmth?
Bible verses he had memorized?
The season’s earnings he had tallied up?
Things he had saved: discarded window frame,
historic sign, a bucket, mended wagon,
length of wire, burlap, bits of tin?
The man who lived to work and worked nonstop ––
a proverb of an endless industry ––
whose forbears used a scythe to cut this plot.
For them, perhaps, the daisies left uncut.
Lesson on Pursuit of Happiness
Some suggest that Jefferson was wrong, that he might have
translated the Greek arete as excellence, not happiness.
The right to pursue that which interests us
according to our talents
until we become good at what we were born to do
and can contribute our newly won skill
for the love of it
to the benefit of democracy.
which would lead to a deeper fulfillment.
Such a pursuit gives coherence to the meaning of life.
The Baseball Player
We’d heard the rumor that, decades before,
he had once been famous playing ball.
And when he came of age, did he observe
how farmers pushed the plows in measured rows
and how the ball would make a measured arc
as he leaned back and balanced on the ground
and threw –– to send a meteor by force
of will, each time, until his brother caught
it in midair and sent it back to him,
where it would smack against his open palm?
–– to marvel at the speed and harmony
of form, this back and forth, repeat, again?
–– to love the fairness in the measured game,
the structure and the rules, the cool surprise?
–– to sign up with the Negro Baseball League
and play for all the farmers just like him?
The House on the Hill
1959
The house was abandoned when my father
walked up the hill to photograph the image
of all that remained, walls, windows, roof,
where he discovered remnants of a life,
a two-roomed house, a family house for three:
father, mother, son, festooned with roses
that grew from the foundation at the south
and poked their peachy blossoms up and through
the window, like a local improvement
committee come to help, or beautify,
or gossip: imagine, the three of them
lived here, and made a home, in this small space,
a sacred space now, like a paradise,
a path between the present and the past
that we humans can imagine, where history
reveals connections as a kind of peace
between the intervals of life and death.
His Unresolved Story
1954
How did it happen that he stopped to rest
that winter afternoon? Or was it night,
too dark for him to see, be seen? The children
heard he fell asleep, but nowhere near
the comfort of his bed. Oblivious
to danger, drowsy from the cold, did he
succumb to winter’s thrall? Neglect? And had
he walked from Little Africa, not far
away, to reach the house his parents kept,
almost beside the house our parents kept?
Was he beside himself (out of his wits),
to lie against the winter’s drift, a crypt
made prematurely, molded to his shape?
Was it a proper fit, this twist of fate?
Yet where they found him, no one thought to look.
He took his final resting place that night,
a fixture in the snow, its cruel embrace,
the bag of groceries heavy in his arms.
Reading a Death Certificate
Female. Black. Wife. Widowed.
She was born in Pennsylvania and lived near the Baltimore Pike.
I know that road. A busy highway. No house number, apartment?
She was born in 1880 and died in 1934.
No longer young, not yet old.
Name of father unknown, birthplace unknown.
They did not write it down.
Maiden name of mother unknown, birthplace unknown.
Perhaps they could not write it down? Because of the trauma of their past?
Occupation housekeeper.
Did the family love her? Did they love her enough?
Did she return their love?
Did she leave her children on holidays to work for the family?
Would she clean on Christmas Eve and come back
to cook on Christmas Day?
Cause of Death: Exposure.
Exposure to what? The winter? Neglect? Cruelty?
Did she succumb to –––? Was it hypothermia?
Missing since December 16, 1933. Found March 14, 1934.
Almost three months! Did she wander––?
Contributory Note: Mentally Distraught.
A note? A medical observation? Was she mentally ill?
Exhausted? Did she wander, or did she run?
Lesson on Silences
Sing of the seven stillborn.
Of those who died before their first year, sing.
Of those who died before the second year, sing.
Of the unidentified, sing.
Of those unknown, listen, and sing.
In the silences, wait
for those who will sit where you sit.
Sing of the laborers, housekeepers, all.
Sing of the devoted, the gifted, the frail, and the strong.
Of those who died of exposure, sing.
Of their mothers and fathers, sing.
Of the melting frost on the unmarked graves, sing.
Sing.
Sing out.
Sing long.