Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
Issue #11, September, 1999 : -- -1  2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12
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Rebecca Seiferle
The Sacrifice Tree

                 

Aztec Ruins

Standing here at the beginning of the ruins, we inhabit
a sky full of cries too numerous and varied
to be identified. And what would we
call them?

The bird that cries like a man....

the bird that buzzes
with the locust pinched in the thumbs of a branch, the bird
with the voice of a broken whistle,

one last breath....just before
it breaks, the bird whose periodic
cry is a bright thread through the bullrushes....


These warbles, clicks, cries of surprise
throng us with a language
we do not understand

our own voice, the lost voice
of our fathers meeting our mothers so long ago,
the voice of whatever calls
us into being...



Copyright © 1999 Rebecca Seiferle.

About the poet.

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Issue #11, September, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.