I wrote the first draft of this poem during a stint as a guest writer for Tupelo Press’s 30/30 project some years ago (March 2015? maybe?), a fundraiser for the press that features poets who write 30 poems in 30 days. Thanks to Kirsten Miles for choosing me to help with that project! It was a very productive time for me and I much appreciated the opportunity.

In April of 2016, I was awarded a writing residency with Tupelo Press and Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art where I met editor, Jeffrey Levine. I consulted with him during that residency on the manuscript that became my second collection, what she holds (MSSP, 2020). His words to me at our one-on-one meeting have sustained me beyond measure. He said, “You are a superb poet; as good as any I’ve ever received.”

Today, while I sat having an afternoon coffee on my back patio, I heard the lilting trill of Sandhill Cranes flying overhead in their familiar vee and headed north. What a thrill!

When this happens, and I always seem to hear them when they do this fly by, as my home is in their migrational path (how lucky is that?), I run outside, if I’m not already there, and whoop and holler a jubilant greeting!

The workshop I missed, the one I mention in this poem was one run by a Jungian-trained therapist and involved seriously intense breathwork that accesses emotional trauma and moves it out of the body-mind (in theory), a workshop I’d attended once already. This time, I chickened out.

Fast forward to 2023 and find this poem has landed in my fourth collection, of failure & faith, a collection of poems that speak to the beauty of the natural world, social and environmental justice, and deep sorrow over the ways of the world.

It seems fitting to share it with you today since the cranes made their visitation today and since early voting in the Texas Primaries started yesterday. Please vote.

& let me know what you think of the poem.

Namaste,

d

eucharist of sky

March 12, 2016
Unprecedented severe cold &a foot of snow in Michocan, Mexico freezes one –and-a--half million Monarch butterflies.


if 

i had attended
the workshop

i would
have missed

this:

visitation

of cranes

      ~

the way
they sing

this religion
of birds

eucharist
of sky

how this raven

black 

harbinger

calls

      ~

these billowing
clouds are mouths

here 
he earth
—fuschia skirt

whirling      feet
bare      &
pounding

there

—a potter
throwing clay:

wild

discontent

      ~

this      is not
democracy

dictators
rage

monarchs
die

      ~

remove
these rulers

none      of them

tell      the 

truth

(c) d. ellis phelps