The Last Slave

By Marilyn Nelson
Samuel Freeman, emancipated
Nov. 8, 1820

You never could tell: people disappeared
suddenly in the old days, left rumors
and big black gaping holes in family trees.
Like the ones our Ancestors must have left
when Fate ripped them out of the world they knew.
You might have been sold. Or you’d run away
from despair and gotten lost in the unknown.
Was there a difference? Might as well be dead.
What happened to the loved ones left behind
holding dripping handfuls of might-have-been
was, simply, Fate. They just went on living:
they just survived. Or didn’t. Such is Fate.

Bought as a child by Captain Joseph Noyes,
I served him with respect until he died
and I realized that my Fate had changed.
For three generations my family
had lived with the Noyeses as one household
divided by an inherited curse
that made some Noyeses, and some property.
This was the only family I knew.
My wife was born and raised in a Noyes home.
Dr. Noyes delivered our two babies.
When I decided to claim my freedom,
five Noyeses testified on my behalf.

I was the last slave. Because freedom means
you have to earn wages, and make them stretch
from payday to payday, for rent, food, clothes,
the doctor when (not if) someone gets sick ... 
It doesn’t change the way the brutes see you,
but it does change the way you see yourself.
And that makes all the difference. I’d been free
six years when I was viciously attacked,
for acting proud while black. If I’d fought back,
I’d probably be dead now. William Noyes
hired a lawyer, who sent the brute to jail.
Because our families’ Fates are intertwined.

I’m sixty-five now. Who could have foreseen
that I’d be sitting out here on my porch
while red-throat whistlers and black-capped dicky-dees
celebrate, and the cherry petals snow.
No more than thirty years ago, who could
have foreseen this as my possible Fate:
a free, white-bearded black man with his wife
sunning together beside their front door,
looking down their forsythia-lined path;
their son out back hammering a horseshoe
in the blacksmith shop; their daughter humming
tunelessly in the kitchen; their grandsons
swearing they’ll finish chores before dinner;
their quiet granddaughter dreaming futures.
Notes:

This poem is from “The Witness Stones Project” portfolio that appeared in the November 2021 issue. The authors write about the series and the collaborative process here.

Source: Poetry (November 2021)