From the Winged Virgin of Quito, “The Dancing Madonna,”
to Bernardo de Legarda, Wood Carver
–venerated Ecuadorian sculpture (1734)
You made me sweat and weep and dance away
my years on the surface of this earth. You
put nothing between me and it but a snake–-
holiest of creatures because legless–-who slithers
belly to belly with Mother Earth, skin-intimate.
I fling the blue shawl you gave me, swing
my skirt, laugh faster, stomp higher, swerve
and curve in a manner better suited to
a Hindu goddess than a Virgin Mary. But look now,
today you’ve carved feathers rippling
from my scapula. Well, plume the serpent
and wing my dancing feet! Feather my breast
and sprout a pair of pinions from my hips!
Give me wings that undulate heavier
than a condor’s, faster than a hummingbird’s,
more transparent than a cicada’s, tinier
than a fairyfly’s. And please, angle all these wings
in different and opposing directions, causing me to jig
and hula, bellying my dance out of here, flying
not straight up with the angels, but sideways
with the dragonflies, swooping with the swallows,
flitting and staggering with the fritillaries.