She said in LA of course that she'd be reincarnated as an Indian princess, and I tried to recall any Lakota or Anishinabe princesses. I said how about wheat berries, flakes of granite on a mountainside, a green leaf beginning to dry out one the ground, a microbe within a dog turd, the windfall apple no one finds, an ordinary hawk fledgling hitting a high-tension wire, apricot blossoms from that old fallow tree? Less can be more she agreed. It might be nice to try something else, say a tree that only gets to dance if the wind comes up but I refuse to believe this lettuce might be Grandma - more likely the steak that they don't serve here. We go from flesh to flesh, she thought, with her nose ring and tongue tack, inscrutable to me but doubtless genetic. There is no lesser flesh whether it grows feathers or fur, scales or hairy skin. The coyote wishes to climb the moonbeam she cannot be, the wounded raven to stay in the cloud forever. Whatever we are we don't quite know it, waiting for a single thought as lovely as April's sycamore. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ITALIAN PICTURES: COSTA MAGIC by MINA LOY TUNICA PALLIO PROPRIOR by MARIANNE MOORE EARTH'S IMMORTALITIES: FAME by ROBERT BROWNING LULLABY OF A LOVER by GEORGE GASCOIGNE THE BARON'S LAST BANQUET by ALBERT GORTON GREENE |