a miracle is due
fourth grade in utah public school
i’m ten and tired of pioneers already
but i’m listening
because today in history
we’re studying a miracle:
how crickets once devoured
our crops, how we plead
until god sent seabirds
who rolled in like clouds
how without them
we’d have met our end
it was the first pioneering spring
and we thought those tender shoots
meant survival. we were oblivious
to what Goshute people knew
how crickets can be caught and dried
ground into flour, made into cakes
instead, we saw a swarm
and thought ourselves gone
i’d known seagulls
from the playground
crying and diving for crusts—
but after that lesson
i saw each of them anew
agent of miracle
more agile than angel
at recess i looked up
as if to cry back
to the flash of wings
we owe you
now i know
we owe you
there was still farmland then
the freeway, merely planned
and yet, in forty years
i’d become part of a swarm
desiccating the lake
swift and insatiable,
it’s past time
to be reciprocal
we owe them
and we know
we owe a miracle
© Nan Seymour 2021
This verse is Part 5 of the collective praise poem: irreplaceable