Rachel Morgan
Poetry
Rachel Morgan is the author of the chapbook, Honey & Blood, Blood & Honey (Final Thursday Press, 2017), and she is the co-editor of Fire Under the Moon: An Anthology of Contemporary Slovene Poetry (Black Dirt Press). Her work recently appears in Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Salt Hill, Boulevard, Alaska Quarterly Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2017 National Poetry Series. Currently she teaches at the University of Northern Iowa and is an editor for the North American Review.
Pray v. Prey
Before sheep evolved, herders tried
to encircle prayer, a spindle of light
unspooling like a waterfall,
but found this, too, passes
like the undulation of labor pains,
one more hard happenstance
against another. At least sheep
unknowingly follow each other.
Thus, the supplicant gathers
his earthly belongings, embarks
with an eye over his shoulder,
and the past remains where it always
has in extremis, but for the green hills
with their wheeling, springing understory.
I've always been fascinated with origins, particularly how words arrive at their meanings and how those meanings shift. The more I think about origins, whether it's words, traditions, or physical items, the more they don't seem to have a unique ab ovo moment, but rather emerge from a reinvention or revision.
Listen: