michelle bonczek evory / poem

Origin

Planets spun around suns, meteors blasted rocks 

to moon, charred the bones of giants. Yet, 

the elegant backs of mammals, smooth bodies breaking 

the water’s surface. In thin columns, ants carried 

what was rightfully theirs to the queen. Round and round 

their little legs went in circles like the heavens. 

Salmon wed themselves to rivers, roaches 

to dark. Civilizations rose and fire made all 

into itself. Women birthed men who peeled 

back mountains. Children dreamed and shale cracked. 

Wheels invented wheels and named it the wheel, forests 

created deserts, blue water slickened black. Winds blew 

gold and salt around the world. Wooden boats with thirsty bodies

bobbed in waves, washed into stranger’s arms.

Poppies bloomed into smoke, seeped into blood. Eyes dimmed 

and the pupil widened further, wider. Farther, 

terns flew but couldn’t land. Others did—wooly mammoth, passenger 

pigeon, glaciered mountain peak. Soon, colonies collapsed 

and the white bear darkened. Men roamed the wreckage 

on their knees searching for anything

wild, anything with root or wing, they looked up at heaven then down 

at the earth, in which, finally, they believed. 

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Michelle Bonczek Evory is the author of The Ghosts of Lost Animals, winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize and an Independent Publishers Book Award, and Naming the Unnamable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations (Open SUNY Textbooks). Her work has received awards from and appeared in journals and magazines including Atlanta Review, North American Review, Rattle, Water~Stone Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, Orion Magazine and is forthcoming in The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II (Trinity University Press). She mentors poets at The Poet’s Billow (www.thepoetsbillow.org) and can be found at www.michellebonczekevory.com and on Instagram @michellebonczek.