AiRMail 6/4/24

Editorial Note
 
You may ask, what does this poem have to do with Harpers Ferry?
 
George Washington first passed through Harpers Ferry as a teenager, a year after Robert Harper arrived. He came to the mountainous region to help survey extensive tracts of land then claimed by England’s Lord Fairfax. Taking advantage of his position, Washington began to purchase land in the region, almost 2300 acres by the time he was 20. These land holdings ultimately exceeded 50,000 acres. Washington was always impressed by the waterpower and topography of Harpers Ferry. In the summer of 1785, he traveled to Harpers Ferry as president of the Patowmack Company, which was formed to complete river improvements on the Potomac and its major tributaries. Nine years later, in 1794, U.S. President Washington designated Harpers Ferry as the site for a new federal armory and arsenal, that very same armory and arsenal that John Brown and his confederates sought to overrun in October 1859.
 
Washington made his home at Mount Vernon on the Potomac River, 75 miles south of Harpers Ferry. He was sole owner of the estate between 1754 and 1799. During that time, at least 577 enslaved people lived and worked on the grounds. At the time of Washington’s death in December 1799, there were 297 enslaved people at Mount Vernon. Five Washington family members were in residence.
 
Unknown numbers of enslaved deceased lie buried on the grounds of Mount Vernon. A memorial to the hundreds of unnamed was erected in 1983 on the site of a burial ground, just south of George Washington’s crypt, and in recent years, archaeological efforts have been made to identify burial sites and locate remains.
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From the Burial Ground for Enslaved People, Mount Vernon
 
Our words are buried here,
words numerous as the microbes,
burrowing worms, and insects,
words that have given life,
new growth abundant as grass.
 
Our words lie beneath the dirt,
unclaimed, untranslated, now
transformed by time and nature.
 
Others’ words are buried here,
words that died before birth, or
at the moment of birth, never
heard, aborted, miscarried.
 
Blood and bones are buried
here, they rest below the surface.
They had names. But we are not
those names, we are not bones.
Buried blood and grease, flesh
and gristle are not who we are.
 
Our words buried here, once
gathered like wildflowers,
cut down like aging trees
riddled with disease,
gutted like so many weeds,
have been dug up like random
relics and reassembled
into stories for your pleasure.