In honor of Juneteenth Day

Poetry, because it is so precise and chiseled, can tell stories and convey ideas that otherwise would take volumes. We are educated about the past in many ways. Poetry, especially this exquisite poetry, is one of those ways. I offer two poems by Rita Dove in honor of Juneteenth Day, The House Slave and Someone’s Blood.

The House Slave

The first horn lifts its arm over the dew-lit grass
and in the slave quarters there is a rustling —
children are bundled into aprons, cornbread

and water gourds grabbed, a salt pork breakfast taken
I watch them driven into the vague before-dawn
while their mistress sleeps like an ivory toothpick

and Massa dreams of asses, rum and slave-funk.
I cannot fall asleep again. At the second horn,
the whip curls across the backs of the laggards —

sometimes my sister’s voice, unmistaken, among them.
“Oh! pray,” she cries. “Oh! pray!” Those days
I lie on my cot, shivering in the early heat.

and as the fields unfold to whiteness,
and they spill like bees among the fat flowers,
I weep. It is not yet daylight.

Someone’s Blood

I stood at 6 a.m. on the wharf,
thinking: This is Independence, Missouri
I am to stay here. The boat goes on to New Orleans.
My life seemed minutes old, and here it was ending.

I was silent, although she clasped me
and asked forgiveness for giving me life.
As the sun broke the water into a thousand needles
tipped with the blood from someone’s finger,

the boat came gently apart from the wharf
I watched till her face could not distinguish itself
from that shadow floated on broken sunlight,
I stood there,. I could not help her. I forgive.

______________________________

Happy Juneteenth Day to all of us, everywhere in America. Freedom is cause for celebration no matter who we are.