The first time must have been exhilarating
and a little frightening, such power
a hunter capturing fallen quills
from the feathered prey that escaped.
The hunter clutches one hollow plume
in his hungry fingers, scribbling fervent pictographs
on thirsty soil, prayers written to elusive birds
have mercy, fall from the sky
give me your flesh.
Or was the first scribe a woman
heavy with child, absent-mindedly tickling
a scrap of flame-crackled bird with a bloody quill
from that evening's rock-heated dinner.
Did she discover shapes
without thinking of them as symbols
of immortal fertility, just tiny mimicries of herself
voluptuous and milk-laden, waiting to learn the meaning
of her own delighted, yet somehow troubled plea
have mercy, lift me toward sky, give me more
than mere flesh.
BIO: Margarita Engle is a botanist and the Cuban-American
author of two novels, Singing to Cuba (Arte Publico Press)
and Skywriting (Bantam), as well as numerous short works
published in a wide variety of anthologies and journals, including
Atlanta Review, Bilingual Review, California Quarterly, Poetry
Greece, and many others. Literary awards include a Cintas
Fellowship, a San Diego Book Award, and a National PEN Women Soul-Making
Poetry Award for spiritual poetry. Her most recent chapbook is a
collection of spiritual haiku, Dreaming Sunlight (Feather
Books, U.K.). Works pending publication include a young adult
novel-in-verse (Henry Holt & Co.), and a chapbook of short poems for
children (Elin Grace Publ.). Margarita Engle lives in central California,
where she enjoys hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and helping her
husband with his volunteer work for a wilderness search-and-rescue dog
training program. Email:
englefam@earthlink.net
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by Margarita Engle