Words

We live in a world of words.
Dangling participles,
and action verbs.
Whether etched in hieroglyphs,
'neath pyramids
or painted on dark, dank cavern walls,
or painstakingly chisled
in cold stone halls,

We live in a world of words

They tell of our achievements,
our histories, they hand down our myths.
Be they written in ancient runes by druid priests,
or drawn in Maya codices
or penned in ink with feathery plumes

We live in a world of words.

Prepositions and state of being verbs
Nouns and predicates, adjectives,
And blurbs
Books are made of ink, paper, cloth and glue
Pronouns, conjunctions and adverbs too

We live in a world of words!

Our alphabets be they Latin or Hebrew,
Aramic, Arabic, Coptic or Cyrillic,
Gave us the Torah, the Koran, the Bible.
Manuscripts were carefully inscribed in Sanskrit,
on palm leaves and stored in jars.
Like the Dead Sea Scrolls,
they preserve our rituals,
Whether they be written
In Egyptian, Greek, and Demotic,
Like the Rosetta Stone
Or carved in Japanese and Chinese characters
On ivory and whalebone

We live in a world of words.

Infinitive phrases, subjects and compound verbs
We live in a world of words!

(Written for and presented at the 25th Birthday Celebration of the Arlington Library, Arlington Washington, September 30, 2006.)

The Reason My Suitcase Was So Heavy

I brought you the ocean
with her pipelines
of pounding waves,
and her memories
of the roiling,
salmon filled rivers
she used to be.

I brought you the emerald sea
with her distant memory
of majestic glacial peaks,
snow packed passes,
icy pinnacles thrusting upwards,
through a halo of clouds,
enciente with drops of silver rain.

I brought you the echo
of a mermaid's song,
in the restless night,
of a turbulent moon-lit sea
and in that glisting,
unbridled moment
I gave you me.

(for Charles
Santa Barbara, California 2006)

Evolution

I swim near summer shadows
glide over dappled shoals
keeping to the fluid shallows
reminiscent of the womb
where I learned to swallow
gulps
of tantalizing air

in the moist amniotic sac
where I shed scales
preferring skin and
hanks of auburn hair
upon my head
I dispensed
with fins and gills
grew hands and feet
with which to tread
and push away
from muddy banks

I've no desire to wallow
in the rushes

no human need

the thin sharp reeds
knot and tangle
cut and pierce
my derma layer

I can dance
below the surface
upon the rocky sand
I shall dangle near
the river bottom
suspended, floating free
like the embryo
I used to be.

 

Sharmagne Leland-St. John, a 2007 Pushcart Prize nominee, is a Native American poet, concert performer,  lyricist, artist, and film maker. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the poetry e-zine Quill and Parchment.com. Sharmagne spends time between her home in the Hollywood Hills, in Southern California and her fishing lodge on the Stillaguamish River in the Pacific Northwest.  She tours the United States, Canada, and England, as a performance poet, either solo or with her band  of poets "Poetry in Motion."   She has published 2 books of poetry ( Unsung Songs (2003)  Silver Tears and Time (2005) and co-authored a book on film production design. Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist (Greenwood/Praeger 2006)

         

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