![\"angela-sorby.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/angela-sorby.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nI’m bad with names, so as I push forty,
\nI forgive myself for hiking lower Rainier<\/p>\npast lots of biggish, greyish birds<\/p>\n
that I can’t describe more precisely.
\nTit for tat: the birds don’t know
\nmy species name, either. Homo sapiens<\/i>,
\nnor my “common” moniker, Angela<\/i>,
\nwhich means “messenger from God,”
\nnor are they aware of my medicinal uses,
\nspelled out on my organ donor card.<\/p>\nIt’s a spring day, dizzy with ignorance.<\/p>\n
The ash in this meadow’s volcanic (I guess)
\nexcept for the one-tenth of one percent
\nthat used to be my grandmother.
\nWe scattered her here with no marker,
\nand field guides don’t list her new name,<\/p>\nnow that she’s crossed over
\nfrom the humanities to the life sciences?
\n Is ash a mineral?
\nIs death implicit in the periodic table
\nIf I could coin a word for this meadow,
\npart grandmother, part volcano, I’d keep mum.
\nThe mountain’s most itself when darkness
\nveils its glacier, the way key messages<\/o><\/p>\ntransmit themselves,<\/p>\n
sans messenger.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Bird Skin Coat<\/i><\/a> is the 24th winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry<\/a> from the University of Wisconsin-Madison English department. The collection also includes “Dove and Dove<\/a>” (from The Sycamore Review<\/i>). Her previous collection, Distance Learning<\/i>, included “Really Barely There” (which has been reimagined as an online animation<\/a>) and “Museum Piece<\/a>” (from Old Hag<\/i>).<\/p>\n