Brittney Corrigan, Oregon, USA
Anthropocene Blessing: Baobab
You of the wide, cylindrical trunk,
too large for any embrace, your
tufts of towering branches threaded
with nests. You of watermelon-scented
flowers, snouted by fork-marked lemurs
through the star-curtained night.
You whose seed-dispersers are already
ghosts, elephant birds lost to the dust
centuries ago, leaving you yearning
many centuries hence. May thirst
never topple you. May lightning
never split your fibrous core. May
your crown reach palmate leaves
into the vast blue heat. Tree of Life,
may you bear fruit despite how
we have failed you. Your taproots
reaching for water beneath our feet,
we with your citrus-bright gifts
upon our lips, may you outlast us.
May you who are sacred and innocent
shed us like dry leaves and remain.
Anthropocene Blessing: California Condor
King of birds, you of the nine-foot wingspan,
you who glide for hours on currents of air
without a single beat, thousands of feet above
the leaden earth. Scavenger ancestor, only
surviving member of your genus, longest-lived.
May you feast on the flesh of the dead
as you toss their spirits up to the sky. May
the carrion ghosts look down upon your
unplumaged head, your black-feathered,
sacred form, and be healed of all that stalked
them in this world. May you be not poisoned
by our buckshot, seething in each carcass
we leave behind. May you outgrow our
captivity to hatch your single eggs in mountain
cliff caves, giant redwood trees. New World
vulture, may your bulbous, wrinkled visage
remember how you soared over mammoths.
May you be revered as virtuous, as rising back
from the brink, as gathering your flock around
the fallen. May you take death in your mouth
and find it sweet, find that it sustains.
Brittney Corrigan was raised in Colorado but has called Portland, Oregon her home since 1990. She holds a degree from Reed College, where she is also employed. Corrigan’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she is the author of the collection Navigation (The Habit of Rainy Nights Press) and the chapbook 40 Weeks (Finishing Line Press). Her newest collection, Daughters, a series of persona poems in the voices of daughters of various characters from folklore, mythology, and popular culture, is forthcoming from Airlie Press in 2021.
For more information, visit Brittney’s website: http://brittneycorrigan.com/.