Amanda Gorman

Prompt for the Planet 
By Amanda Gorman 

The condor 
The cuckoo 
The crane 
The flicker 
The flycatcher 
The falcon 
The owl (spotted, gray, great) 
The plover 
The rail (black, clapper, light-footed) The Bald eagle 

Almost all and only gust, 
In their long walk of dust, 
With just their God-given names crusted In the pounding temples of dunes. 

Each a child with their own sanded 
Language, a breach 
-ing history, a web-footed mystery, 
Winged and waiting 
In the gut of the earth. 

Swallowed seagulls shift in the sand, 
Their bodies a flash of white rain, 
Veined, ripe for the breath, 
Caked with death. 
The falling. 
The floods 
Unchecked, 
Cigar flecks, 
Cigar buds, 
The black mandible buds inside 

The throne of the tree stump, or 
The tree’s palm, 
The palm tree, 
The palmed tree, we 
The psalm, tree, 
The calm tree, we 
bomb trees 
Those imports, extorted paradise; 
A treescape 
Of an escape 
Scraped and sprung 
Beside the ridged shapes of neighborhoods. We could be 
Crouching, but proud, amidst the earth. Made of such brown, we would 
-n’t be looking down 
When we should be looking up: 

At the song of the sea, she 
Sculpted into a mirror for the face of a globe. 
She, glass with a scar healed so tight it’s sea glass white, the long stretch of bright of a sunset in all its beckoning and blinding. 

There’s a skinny black girl at the pier 
Over here almost daring to fly, 
Cuz she knows the ocean is both a graveyard And a spiritual dancing off the lip. 
Every word a wound, 
Every word a way, 
She reaches amidst the crumbs of her pocket And fishes out beads of letters, 
Cranes her neck at the flicker 
Of the gull caught in flight, spotted, grey, great, Riding the rails of a bald wind, 
Black, clapper, light-footed. 

She tosses poetry in arcs above the water like seeds, Head thrown back, laughing hard 
and waits.