On Ethical ELA today, Margaret Simon shared the work of fellow Louisiana native and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Jericho Brown. For the Open Write challenge, Margaret encouraged writers to use an echo line, anaphora, in composing poetry, something Brown does so magnificently. You can read an excerpt of his work and many other moving poems on being “a marcher or a leaper” here.
I lifted a line of Brown’s from The Tradition: “I’m the one who leaps.” My poem is based on a long-ago story told by someone who mattered to me, so much …
I’m the One Who Leaps
I’m the one who leaps
not from here to there
but within.
I’m the one who leaps
not like the farm boy standing rooted
to the old front porch
listening to hounds on the hunt.
Baying, fever pitch, nearing, nearing
when in the clearing
bursts the fawn from the brush.
White spots still visible
here and there
on the body running, running
right toward the farm boy standing rooted
to the old front porch.
No time to think
No turning back
Hounds closing in
-the fawn cries, that final sound
a creature makes when it knows
it’s reached the end.
The boy stands rooted.
No time to think
he just does it
he just opens his arms.
No time to think
The fawn just sees,
sees and leaps …
The farm boy
who caught the fawn
on the old front porch
became a preacher
standing rooted
in the Word of God.
Be the one who leaps,
he told us children,
into the Father’s open arms.
You cannot save yourselves.
I sat rooted to the pew
hearing the hounds on the hunt,
seeing the fawn
and those open arms.
I’m the one who leaps
not from here to there
but within.
Photo: Running fawn. Cropped. USFWS Midwest Region. CC BY
lit bits and pieces 