The old stories say we were animals,
timeless, immortal, unselfconscious,
until Mountain dreamed us awake, and our
newborns wailed. Then we called ourselves
The People, called the animals Bisonte, Zaldi.
Grieved the indifferent grace we’d lost.
One day an old man brushed his hand
across a shoulder curving out from a firelit wall―
what we were once, reaching from stone.
First Painter fell on his face, rose quickly,
looked for a piece of char to complete
Bisonte’s heavy head and deep thorax,
slender hips, legs that seemed impossibly
delicate for the weight they danced.
John Palen's Open Communion: New and Selected Poems was published by Mayapple Press in 2005. Since then he has had chapbooks published by March Street Press and Pudding House, and has poetry or flash fiction appearing or forthcoming in The Honey Land Review, Sleet, Press 1, Jelly Bucket, Temenos, Bare Root Review, Off the Coast, Ragazine, and Clapboard House. A Michigander for 35 years, he is now living and writing in Central Illinois.
