We Are All Shapeshifters…
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
… transforming to fit the various roles our lives require of us. But there is more, aren’t we all, each and every one of us, more than we seem? We are all enchanted creatures. As C.S. Lewis so wisely says, “Remember your fairytales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as inducing them. And you and I are in need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us…” (Lewis, “The Weight of Glory, 5)
Shapeshifter by Maureen McQuerry
There is a moment
when the creature seems to disappear.
Nothing remains, but a quivering
in the air, the invisible finger
that runs your ridge of spine
My students ask if it hurts
to become another. We’ve read
the stories of humans furred,
flesh erupting to wings, or scales,
gill-gasp of transformation.
I tell them some are stories of pursuit,
a dove answered with a hawk,
a hare with greyhound as reply.
Pursuer and pursued, their deft dance
that ended once with a grain of corn,
swallowed by a hen who birthed
the storyteller,Taliesin.
But what the students want to know is pain.
That remembered moment when
quills pierce skin, fingernails bleed
to claws. Beyond the window
winter’s first kiss startles the grass with frost.
I tell them yes,
there is always pain at birth or when,
our tent of flesh opens
like a door to the sky,
and something more, you must
lean close to hear
the single note of joy.
Copyright 2007 by Maureen McQuerry.
