origin song

If you were born where your first language
was never called words, then no one could persuade you
that silence is empty, and somewhere the swifts, the whales,
your oldest kin would still be calling.

They can tell you are far from them now,
but not enough to forget
how rivers remember when rains return, to rise
so sea bells hang briefly from branches now fish-kissed,
and the snakes you watch without naming,
the delta birds—
you wonder if they have heard your other names.

Maybe what calls
is no memory at all,
but the pull that turns whales
toward waters they have never seen,
that curves a swallow’s wing,
the hidden maps of swimming salmon,
the green
that climbs toward light.

Whatever this soft astonishment is—
star-fire held a while in bone,
let it lean
toward the wet-feathered ones,
the slitherers who kiss bark
with their bellies,
the blooming.

And if I remain
half forgetting,
half listening,
let me hear
still, small songs
in the fig tree,
hush of fur near enough
until what some dark cavity

of my inner ear
keeps calling
origin song
turns out not to be

before now,
but arriving,
asking only
whether we are still able
to follow.

Author: Stacey C. Johnson

I keep watch and listen, mostly in dark places. View all posts by Stacey C. Johnson