Issue #11, September, 1999 : --
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Rebecca Seiferle
The Sacrifice Tree
The Blue Mustard
The pot with its smoldering black
and white that appears to be carrying
stars is the vessel that reminds
me of my daughter, for she, too, is
a star, brightly burning
in the distance, as she charts
the constellations moving
into and out of
the spirals of heaven.
My first visit, so many years ago to these ruins,
bent over, racing through the doorways
through which I had to fold myself
like a fetus wishing to be born,
that gave me the feeling of entering
a room where the window
was not a window but a portal
to another world, made me settle here,
root in these four corners, this earth.
And now, revisiting the ruins,
wandering among the artifacts
extracted from so many other
vanished lives, I see among
the pots--the shape of a puffer fish
blown up by its own fear,
the dream of a fish in the desert,
a spout with the horns of a goat--
not only the shape of my own life,
but my daughter's.
So many fronds, delicate
hair of the earth, tiny clusters
of stars on the innumerable stems,
have grown from the seed
of a single moment,
like the blue mustard
now blooming
along every path.
Copyright © 1999 Rebecca Seiferle.
About the poet.
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Issue #11, September, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.