Editors’ Choice — Poem of the Year

Carolyn Hall

slave cemetery
the tug of the current
on willow fronds

Carolyn Hall

Moving with the deep, subtle power of a river current, Carolyn Hall’s poem pulls at my emotions. It stirs a strong memory of my childhood. One freezing day, I sat with my young cousin at a scrubbed, white deal table in a kitchen that was filled with a wood stove’s heat and the energy of bustling women. We listened while a woman named Sing described how she was taught to cook by her grandmother, who told Sing stories of her life as a slave. Years later, I heard the unforgettable voice of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking his immortal words: “. . . I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood.”

It is often difficult to delineate boundaries of centuries-old burial grounds without expensive archaeological surveys. Great numbers of slave cemeteries that lie concealed under tangles of weeds and debris may never be found. Lost to the unremitting forces of progress, others lie under concrete and steel. Only a few eighteenth and nineteenth century maps show the locations of slave burial grounds, and on these few, the plots are not clearly defined, with no roads leading directly to them. Unwilling to give up tillable land, most slave owners chose burial grounds in marginal areas not suitable for agriculture, such as low, swampy places subject to flooding. Lacking headstones and monuments, mourners adorned the graves with wildflowers or small trees and sometimes placed wooden markers on them. On the Sea Islands and along the South Atlantic coast, relatives and friends of dead slaves sometimes covered the individual burial mounds with oyster shells — the same kind of shells that are used in building tabby houses.

Cemeteries represent the foundation of African-American history. Some that are still used today have survived the passage of time in the care of descendents of slaves. Families exist who have buried their dead in the same cemetery for close to 200 years, beginning with their ancestors who were brought in chains to work the surrounding land. Wherever the site of Carolyn’s haiku, it is a unique historical resource.

With delicate skill and sensitivity, Carolyn creates resonance through powerful juxtaposition and symbolism. She places a beautiful scene that traditionally evokes a gentle mood and connotations of pleasant, warm-weather activities beside an image that has associations of the most base acts of human cruelty. As Paul MacNeil wrote in his essay for this poem (The Heron’s Nest Award Vol. V:06), “The slave times are past, yet the river, the land, and the poet remain.”

But those times still reverberate; the river still flows, tugging, sometimes uprooting whatever is in its path; the land is forever changing; the poet does not stand unmoved. I sense the poem itself as metaphor. The era of human bondage is over in the United States, but descendents of its perpetrators, victims, and fierce abolitionists continue to struggle for balance in its aftermath.

— Ferris Gilli