The coin is in the air.
World – no details – turns dreaming to memory:
prints in the dust, a trace of totem, a feather like a bird’s.
Souvenirs to be drawn with the left hand sensing hair, bone, flesh,
wings lifting light.
Never flew one of these things before,
don’t under stand the controls
What do I do when the bridge becomes a tunnel?
The walls are too tight, I’m losing feathers.
Landing abruptly, welcomed by trees, I look down to see
my prints in the earth, feathers, and a puzzling device,
interlocked circles of night and day, an artifact, something made.
Is this what draws me? I feel a rhythm of tracking like jungles slashed
with flashing knives, glints of gold and green, sap bleeding,
leaves rustling in their decay, inexorable forward pulsing
forming a track, a path, a new way of being.
I feel newness in my wings; artifacts, something made.
Breathe. Receive the air. Take what I need. Send the air out.
Through white shutters, day comes
with weather, machines, finches, jays, oak branch striving.
Oats. Walnuts. Oranges. Fire. I see the wood on the porch and turn my head.
My feet are on the floor.
Arms full of split oak, I remember again,
O yes, the dream! Cloven prints on the path. Feathers. Coin. Woods.
Deer trapped by the new highway,
learning to fly.
Joanna Wiebe, March 25, 1989