An inch or so of melting snow...

Frontispiece “Poems on Various Subjects,” London, 1773 (Public Domain).

An inch or so of melting snow

covered the trail and dripped from trees

around George Washington Carver National Monument.

As a kid, Carver's story made parts of nature real to me.

And now this stream, this house,

this landscape made Carver real to me.

That day I bought “Poems of Phillis Wheatley,”

and it included Margaretta Matilda Odell's memoir

of Phillis Wheatley, which says,

“Mrs. Wheatley wished to obtain a young negress,

with the view of training her up under her own eye,

that she might, by gentle usage....”

Phillis read and wrote English and Latin.

She was baptized in Boston's Old South Meeting House

and critiqued the institution by which she came to Christianity:

“Some view our sable race with scornful eye...

Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain

May be refined, and join the angelic train.”

Her elegy “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitfield” earned wider recognition,

and Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, helped her publish "Poems on Various Subjects,"

which contained her “Thoughts on the Works of Providence”:

“...Infinite Love, where'er we turn our eyes,

Appears: this ev'ry creature's want supplies;

This most is heard in Nature's constant voice;

This makes the morn, and this the eve, rejoice;

This bids the fostering rains and dews descend,

To nourish all, to serve one gen'ral end,

The good of man: yet man ungrateful pays

But little homage, and but little praise....”

After the death of Mrs. Wheatley, Phillis Wheatley married.

She and her husband suffered under harsh conditions

during and after war with England.

A second volume of poetry was lost

when no American would publish it.

And Phillis Wheatley died December 1784.