Seeding an Alphabet

Seeding an Alphabet

By Emily Warn Emily Warn
To invent the alef-beir,
decipher the grammar of crows,
read a tangle of bare branches
with vowels of the last leaves
scrawling their jittery speech
on the sky’s pale page.
 
Choose a beginning.
See what God yields and dirt cedes
when tines disturb fescue, vetch, and sage,
when your hand dips grain from a sack,
scattering it among engraved furrows.
 
Beyond the hill, a plume of dust
where oxen track the hours.
Does God lead or follow or scout?
To answer, count to one again and again:
a red maple leaf and a yellow maple leaf
that wind rifles and rain shines until they let go,
blazing their scripted nothingness on air.

Emily Warn, “Seeding an Alphabet” from Shadow Architect. Copyright © 2008 by Emily Warn. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.

Source: Shadow Architect (Copper Canyon Press, 2008)

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Poet Emily Warn

POET’S REGION U.S., Northwestern

Subjects Nature, Trees & Flowers, Religion, God & the Divine, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics

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Emily Warn

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Emily Warn's newest collection of poetry is Shadow Architect (Copper Canyon Press 2008). Her previous books include The Leaf Path and The Novice Insomniac. She currently lives in Seattle.

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SUBJECT Nature, Trees & Flowers, Religion, God & the Divine, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics

POET’S REGION U.S., Northwestern

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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

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