Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

Heartbeat. The drum of human life. No matter who we are, where we were born, or how we live, it is the rhythm of each of our lives.

The Native American women poets who are today’s subjects are from different tribes. Their lives are not alike, but they share with each other, and with all the rest of us, the birth of new life, and the deaths of loved ones.

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Elise Paschen (1959 — ) is co-founder and co-editor of Poetry in Motion, a program which places poetry posters in subways and buses across the country. She is the daughter of the renowned prima ballerina Maria Tallchief. Dr. Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her major poetry collections are Houses: Coasts  (1985), Infidelities (1996), Bestiary (2009) and The Nightlife (2017).  She was the Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America (1988-2001), and has edited numerous anthologies, including Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America (1997)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/elise-paschen

Birth Day

— for Alexandra, born May 17, 1999

Armored in red, her voice commands
every corner. Bells gong on squares,
in steeples, answering the prayers.
Bright tulips crown the boulevards.

Pulled from the womb she imitates
that mythic kick from some god’s head.
She roars, and we are conquered.
Her legs, set free, combat the air.

Naked warrior: she is our own.
Entire empires are overthrown.

“Birth Day” from Birthday Poems: A Celebration, © 2002 by Elise Paschen –
Thunder’s Mouth Press

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