By Andre F. Peltier
We carve words from clay.
We breathe life into the lungs
of the sentence,
and we wash away the filth.
For forty day and forty nights,
I carry my poems
in the bosom of my ark.
Two by two,
they wait.
Two by two they rise
to see the rainbow.
When the dove returns
with the olive branch
and the vessel rests atop
the Mount Ararat,
the words lift their hearts
to the sun and sing the songs
of a brand-new day.
The poem follows
the brightest star
in the heavens
and gives birth in all
the mangers
of all the worlds.
Surrounded by lambs, goats, llamas,
sewer rats, tarantulas,
and the common garter snake,
I send the sentences out
to wash away the filth.
With flames in their hair,
the words speak in strange
mad tongues;
they call out to distant shores
and remember the war of
Cain and Abel.
They remember the pillars of salt
and the burning bush.
The bush, too, spoke in tongues.
It said, “You are latent
with unseen existences.”[1]
When the Red Sea split open,
I split it with song.
And the burning bush said,
“I think heroic deeds were
all conceiv’d
in the open air.”[2]
The poems themselves
were conceiv’d
in the open air as well.
The clay rose forth from deep
within the soul of the planet.
The soul of the planet sighed
and all seemed beautiful.
The soul of the planet
is rude, incomprehensible,
but never silent.
When the soul rises,
when the rainbow compact
allows for rebirth and rejoice,
it allows only as I wish.
Only as I carve words
from clay.
Whitman, Walt. “Song of the Open Road.” Leaves of Grass. W. W. Norton and Company, 2005.
ibid.
Andre F. Peltier (he/him) is a Pushcart Nominee and a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches literature and writing. He lives in Ypsilanti, MI, with his wife and children. His poetry has recently appeared in various publications like CP Quarterly, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Provenance Journal, Lavender and Lime Review, About Place, Novus Review, Fiery Scribe, and Fahmidan Journal, and most recently in Muleskinner Journal. In his free time, he obsesses over soccer and comic books.
You may find him on Twitter or www.andrefpeltier.com.
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