ABOUT BARBARA EVANS STANUSH

Barbara Evans Stanush spent her first thirty years on the East Coast, the second thirty in South Texas, where she and her husband Claude raised three daughters. She is an educational consultant, a poet-in-the-schools, a newspaper columnist and writer. Her book, Texans: a Story of Texan Cultures for Young People, was published by the University of Texas Insitute of Texan Cultures in 1968.

Things with Wings

The doctor says
you'll know when you
feel a flutter like a
butterfly held in cupped hands.
Nadia and I leave our husbands
to hear a guru talk
in a basement on McDougal Street.
We sit on straight-backed wooden chairs
half listening in the near silence.
A feather brushes the walls of my womb.

A tiger swallowtail
struggles with its crysalis
pumps life into its cloak of escape.
It soars, finally,
circles twice, expanding
to its golden wingtips,
and angles into the blue.

A sparrow hits the window
and falls inside my room.
The fledgling huddles spent
against my chest.
I let the moment last.

Copyright © Pecan Grove Press,
1997-2003
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Most recent revision
November 11, 2003