Local educator Mobi Warren leads Haiku Hikes at Government Canyon State Natural Area the first Sunday of every month. Her* work has appeared in the Texas Poetry Calendar and is on the buses as part of VIA's* Poetry on the Move contest. Warren will lead Words for Birds V — the fifth annual celebration of our feathered friends in poetry, at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center on Sunday April 15, 2012 at 1:00 pm, in the Center's outdoor amphitheater. Readers include Jim Brandenburg, Mobi Warren, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, Cyra Dumitru, and Ruth Matlow Asher.
We are the same creature
By Mobi Warren
Startled, owl snaps from a perch
in the woolen dark. My feet lift
in surprise, ankles sprout wings.
An arc of silence passes overhead—
a cloud of white feathers so close
the ends of my hair untether.
Was her conversion like this—the surgeon
who tossed her diploma in a basket
and went to work in the hospital laundry?
When I first heard of it, I protested
the dulling of her scalpel, the talons of
her learning. Was it madness?
Inspired medicine? Sheets tenderly
folded gave wings to every bed. Pillows
became the downy breasts of swans.
Free; 1pm Sunday, April 15, Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, 10750 Pleasonton, (210) 628-1639, tx.audubon.org/mitchell-lake-audubon-center. To see a calendar of all National Poetry Month events in San Antonio, go to npmsa2012.com.
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* Corrections made
