Metamórfosis
by Pat Mora
Pearls here
Pearls there
Pearls behind us
—George Sarandáris
I
Topless
she rules
her turquoise sea,
this child,
kicks her commands.
Arms outflung,
she orchestrates
waves, enters
her Aegean kingdom,
plants her small
feet triumphantly
on obedient sand,
scolds a swell
that lifts her
with its clear power.
The sea bows,
retreats.
Vasílissa
tis thálassas
smiles
regal approval
at the light
rippling her long mysterious hair.
II
Laughing, full nude
fengári tosses
an eager string
of fish to cheer
the night-brooding sea.
Like fireflies they dart
and glint in the sea’s dark,
whispering folds.
The fish leap
to ride the waves
of its silver sorrow
like stars scurrying
to our fabled shores.
Might I step softly
on the jasmine shimmer
of their fins
from island to island
on this fragrant bridge of light?
III
We are all beautiful
in water. Girls
lift their mothers
laughing in their arms.
Grandmothers, heavy in sand,
float in this
caressing sea,
point their toes, dancers again,
their arms, graceful, as silvery-
green olive trees,
their legs, lovely in play,
in ripples of light.
In 2018, The University of Arizona Press will publish Pat Mora's seventh adult poetry collection, Encantado: Desert Monologues; and Lee and Low Books, her children’s poetry collection, Bookjoy, Wordjoy. Her other adult collections include Adobe Odes; Aunt Carmen's Book of Practical Saints; Communion; Borders; Chants, and Agua Santa: Holy Water, where "Metamórfosis" was first published. Among her awards are Honorary Doctorates from North Carolina State University and SUNY Buffalo, a Life-time Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, a Virginia Hamilton Literary Award, an Honorary Membership in the American Library Association, a Life-time Membership in USBBY, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship to write in Umbria, Italy, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Texas at El Paso. She was a recipient and judge of a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a recipient and advisor of the Kellogg National Leadership Fellowships. Born in El Paso to a loving, bilingual family, Pat lives in Santa Fe. She is always working on new books.
"Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body" is the second annual offering of the Poetry Coalition — more than twenty organizations nationwide dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and communities, as well as the important contributions poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. A founder member of the Coalition, Letras Latinas at Notre Dame's Institute's for Latino Studies has partnered with the Best American Poetry blog to present 10 poems by women in March that engage with this year's theme, which borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "Flores Woman." The poems in this project were curated by Emma Trelles.