Invocation by Helene Johnson

Invocation

by Helene Johnson

Let me be buried in the rain

In a deep, dripping wood,

Under the warm wet breast of Earth

Where once a gnarled tree stood.

And paint a picture on my tomb

With dirt and a piece of bough

Of a girl and a boy beneath a round, ripe moon

Eating of love with an eager spoon

And vowing an eager vow.

And do not keep my plot mowed smooth

And clean as a spinster’s bed,

But let the weed, the flower, the tree,

Riotous, rampant, wild, and free,

Grow high among my head.

I grew up with many poetry collections in the house, the book this poem is in was one of those books. American Negro Poetry, edited by Arna Bontemps, was published in 1963 (Hill and Wang Publishers).

This poem is a sonnet, although it is more in keeping with contemporary American sonnet forms than what a traditional sonnet is. Johnson used 14 lines and most of the lines are 7 or 8 syllables. They are definitely rhythmic lines.

The rhyme scheme is interesting.

A, B, C, B

D, E, F, F

E, D (slant), G, H

H, G

It bonkers, but I kinda love it!

The power of this poem lies not in its playing with form, but in its message and all of the detailed images Johnson provides.

"Let me be buried in the rain" is a bit unusual. We have so many examples in literature of rainy funerals as portents of doom, so this seems a bit unprecedented. But we are quickly told this is not a usual funeral in a cemetery but a woman wanting to be buried in nature. I love "in a deep, dripping wood"--we are having a typical October day here in Oregon, so I picture this very clearly (I am living it!). Even if you do not live in the Pacific Northwest, I think any reader gets the sense of a wooded area that is wet, experiencing a shower; if it were raining very hard, you could not tell drips from raindrops.

The next section offers a very romantic request; the speaker wants a picture on her forest tomb of a young couple under the moon, professing their love to one another and making vows. "Eating of love with an eager spoon" is quite wonderful.

That request is followed by another. She does not want a typical plot, mowed and kept pristine; "clean as a spinster's bed" is one of my favorite lines of any poem ever.

But let the weed, the flower, the tree,

Riotous, rampant, wild, and free,

Grow high among my head.

There is so much to enjoy here, starting with the fact that she lists weeds before flowers and trees. That says a lot about the speaker's idea of nature. In case you aren't sure, the poem's penultimate line is very clear--although she wants a tombstone, the other traditional burial arrangements are not for her. She wishes to be surrounded in death by nature at its most untamed and free of fences.

A lovely sentiment, especially given our odd rituals for death (read more about those rituals and why most of them are seriously awful in Caitlin Doughty's fabulous book, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory).

Helene Johnson is a mysterious figure in American literature. She was part of the Harlem Renaissance, was very close friends with Zora Neale Hurston, and was cousin to Dorothy West, author of one of my favorite novels, The Wedding. She wrote and published from the age of 19 until she was about 30, when she stopped publishing her work and making public appearances completely. She worked at jobs very separate from poetry and literature and died at 89, having never explained why she left public life.