Shark Reef, July 2003: Molly Swan-Sheeran

SHARK REEF
A Publication of the Lopez Writers Guild
Vol. 3, No. 2
July 2003

POETRY

by Molly Swan-Sheeran

SONG SPARROW

Predawn, the song sparrow
sings his traditional ballad.
It is the leitmotif
of my life.
When consciousness found me,
in early childhood mornings
this song I heard.
Sweet, oh sweet,
drawing my heart up into the treetops.
Each chapter of my being
is numbered and stitched
by the sparrow.
Generations of tiny beaks
and pulsing feathered throats
have told my tale and theirs.
Now, today,
weighed down
like an old wire hanger
with too heavy an overcoat,
I stand and listen.
As the new sky brightens
other songs join in.
Though I am silent,
inside my spirit
there are wings,
inside my spirit
there is a song.

SEEDS OF ART

It was the angel in the clouds,
the face on the tree,
the driftwood and rock
that looked like a seal, a wolf, a bear.
It was the figure of a goddess
in the reflection of the hills in the sea.
These were the seeds of art
when our eyes suddenly saw
that a thing which was not really there
could appear to be there.
A thing could be seen in the symbol,
in a few blotches and scratches,
there an eye, there a mouth.
Then we scratched on the cave wall,
and smeared bits of ocher and soot.
There an eye, there an antler.
And the seeds of art, of language, were sown.
Here, here, I tapped the wall,
here a wolf, here a bison.
Here, here, I drew a river with a stick in the dirt.
There the water and there the mountain.
And the map of the land unfolded
in the minds of us all.

Molly Swan-Sheeran, who makes her living as a metal smith, has been writing poetry for more than 35 years. She has also written a book about designing paper-cut Celtic knots.

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