Harriet Monroe

From “Carolina Wood-cuts”

“OLD Mammy Jones, I came to see your rose-bush.”

“Come right up, sonny!”

“Why does your rose-bush grow so taller and prouder

Than any white people’s roses?”

“Dunno, sonny—ask de good Lo’d.”

“Look, it has a thousand arms,

And they carry a million roses

In their baskets of leaves—

Over your roof, Mammy Jones,

Into your porch, into your wood-shed,

Pushing and crowding out everything

From the ground to the sky—

As round as the world!”

“It’s to trim my ole cabin up, sonny.”

“My mother has a garden, Mammy Jones,

With nice little rose-bushes in it

That the gardener trimmed,

And this morning there were pink and yellow buds

And lots of green ones.

But not roses and roses like yours,

Way up for God to smell ’em

In the sky!

Why is it, Mammy Jones?”

“Dunno, sonny—praps de good Lo’d like Mammy Jones;

Praps he give a bouquet to his gal.”