Decades I have waited to make sunlight
for all of this to matter, a mark built to
rest and a mark laid living. I am sworn
to my worth even when the scales weep
their own little swords, slanting outside
the song and full of soothing to speak each
vowel. Everything happens toward its own
making, an infinite becoming from all that
is yet to be faced. When it seemed
as though I had touched the arm of love,
little did I know, I had found a door
with which to enter the sky. And to
the sky, little did I know, the door would
open for me. All, as it will be, as it should be,
in effort of The Great Balance.
Five days ago, I stood under a flight of egrets,
shifting between fenced field of mud and factory
yard. What could they have guessed of stability,
a fairness of wings, restoring what had always been
theirs to have. Like them, I have
steeped myself with others, for so long my roots
sprouting from the cloud of this fight, daring to follow
where the arrow leads, until it is my turn.
Until now, my turn.
Copyright © 2020 Mai Der Vang. This poem was co-commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and the New York Philharmonic as part of the Project 19 initiative, and appeared in the Spring–Summer 2020 issue of American Poets.