One Morning

Yellow pines No ever no green except
where stems brown needles green I walk
on the wooden train The fall’s water you swam in
one cold morning What you braved That ice
path A horse fence Where fences are horses
with long hair I braid the tale the fall of stables
Four paws touch dirt stirring
a flirt of sky a bundle of rare You bundle
into stables I open with sandy tongue
taste the grain of barkwater
I look at myself in
a mirror of weather
Rain trenzas Dirt cups us We drink
& spin like tornillos A swallow’s nest like an adobe
tornado Shit & mud & feathers & forming pitchfork claws
Eggshells gone We rest in the ocean smalls
the pink throat
The back door is also the front The only
smoke hole Feathers rise
& we follow

Emmy Pérez
One Morning originally appeared in Notre Dame Review, Summer 2006, Issue 22, and was reprinted in The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007), and online at the Poetry Foundation archive.