The Government Of Nature (Pitt Poetry Series)
by Afaa Michael Weaver

This is the second volume of a trilogy (the first was The Plum Flower Dance) in which Weaver analyzes his life, striving to become the ideal poet. In The Government of Nature, Afaa Michael Weaver explores the trauma of his childhood—including sexual abuse—using a "cartography and thematic structure drawn from Chinese spiritualism." Weaver is a practitioner of Daoism, and this collection deals directly with the abuse in the context of Daoist renderings of nature as metaphor for the human body.

This volume of poetry includes the poem, “Scrapple,” which you may watch Afaa reads in the video below.

It was cousin Alvin who stole the liquor,

slipped down Aunt Mabie’s steps on the ice,

fresh from jail for some small crime.

Alvin liked to make us laugh while he took

the liquor or other things we did not see,

in Aunt Mabie’s with her floors polished,

wood she polished on her hands and knees

until they were truth itself and slippery

enough to trick you, Aunt Mabie who loved

her Calvert Extra and loved the bright inside

of family, the way we come connected in webs,

born in clusters of promises, dotted

with spots that mark our place in the karma

of good times, good times in the long ribbon 

of being colored I learned when colored

had just given way to Negro and Negro was

leaving us because blackness chased it out

of the house, made it slip on the ice, fall

down and spill N-e-g-r-o all over the sidewalk

until we were proud in a new avenue of pride,

as thick as the scrapple on Saturday morning

with King syrup, in the good times, between

the strikes and layoffs at the mills when work

was too slack, and Pop sat around pretending

not to worry, not to let the stream of sweat

he wiped from his head be anything except

the natural way of things, keeping his habits,

the paper in his chair by the window, the radio

with the Orioles, with Earl Weaver the screamer

and Frank Robinson the gentle black man,

keeping his habits, Mama keeping hers,

the WSID gospel in the mornings, dusting

the encyclopedias she got from the A&P,

collecting the secrets of neighbors, holding

marriages together, putting golden silence

on children who took the wrong turns, broke

the laws of getting up and getting down

on your knees. These brittle things we call

memories rise up, like the aroma of scrapple,

beauty and ugliness, life’s mix

where the hard and painful things from folk

who know no boundaries live beside

the bright eyes that look into each other,

searching their pupils for paths to prayer.