Lorna Dee Cervantes

This morning, we consider a poem by Lorna Dee Cervantes (born August 6, 1954), Chicana poet and activist, considered one of the great figures in Chicano poetry. .

Reared in the poverty of what she calls the welfare class of San Jose, Cervantes says her writing career began one Christmas morning when she found the works of Stevenson, Byron, and other poets at the bottom of a box filled with secondhand toys. These poems came to Cervantes in her sal si puedes barrio as one of the most important events in her life.

Here is one of her poems for your consideration:

Emplumada

When summer ended
the leaves of snapdragons withered
taking their shrill-colored mouths with them.
They were still, so quiet. They were
violet where umber now is. She hated
and she hated to see
them go. Flowers
born when the weather was good — this
she thinks of, watching the branch of peaches
daring their ways above the fence, and further,
two hummingbirds, hovering, stuck to each other,
arcing their bodies in grim determination
to find what is good, what is
given them to find. These are warriors
distancing themselves from history.
They find peace
in the way they contain the wind
and are gone.

-- Lorna Dee Cervantes