Margaret Dornaus
Margaret Dornaus holds an MFA in the translation of poetry from the University of Arkansas. Her own short-form and free verse poetry appears in numerous journals and anthologies, including: Contemporary Haibun Online, I-70 Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Silver Birch Press and One Art. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she received a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award in 2017 for her haibun and tanka prose collection, Prayer for the Dead. As founding editor of Singing Moon Press, she feels privileged to have published several short-form anthologies, including Behind the Mask: Haiku in the Time of Covid-19.
Lesson One: The First Word is Osiyo
When we’re learning a new language, we’re like a little kid.
— Cherokee Language Instructor Wade Blevins
It’s difficult to learn the language of first speakers,
he tells us. Harder if you don’t carry the blood
memory of a grandmother forming the words
his grandmother sang to him. Words like wind (unole).
Like sun. Like moon. Hard if you don’t carry the blood
memory. Perhaps impossible to recreate the universe
his ancestors knew. You, who know so little
of their life, their world, their words.
Impossible to recreate their universe.
Or the trail his ancestors walked, singing
Hello! (Osiyo!) Mothers and grandmothers
holding on to small hands, pointing to rocks
and trees on the trail they walked, singing
Osiyo, siyo. Calling out each name
as they pass. As if meeting old friends
(ginali) they might never see again—
Siyo. Siyo. Calling out each name
so they might never forget how
to say grasshopper. Locust. Butterfly
(ka ma ma, ka ma ma, ka ma ma).
So they might never forget how
the eagle’s flight is a flight of survival.
How the cardinal’s song is a song
that will carry them through winter.
How the eagle’s flight is a flight of survival.
How his grandmother’s words (unole, ginali,
ka ma ma) will carry him through winter.
How the first word will always be Osiyo.
