Bernardin

HOME

elizabeth

bernardin

georgetown

1986-1987

Poetry

ABOUT

WORKS

Transmigration

Libby Bernardin has published two chapbooks, The Book of Myth (SC Poetry Initiative, 2009) and Layers of Song (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in journals including Notre Dame Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Cairn, Kakalak, Pinesong, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina Yearbooks, winning the Society’s Forum Prize in Spring 2015. She is a life member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors and a member of the Poetry Society of South Carolina and the North Carolina Poetry Society. Her poem “Transmigration,” winner of the Poetry of Witness Award published and in Pinesong, has been nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize. Her book Stones Ripe for Sowing is forthcoming in Fall 2018 from Press 53.

TRANSMIGRATION

Elizabeth Bernardin

Only the least sandpiper stayed to catch my thoughts,

birds themselves, flits of movement.

In Syria, the people are migrating

without compass, Bedouins without tents.

I feel the weight of the world, not free

like the Great White Pelican, sure of its route.

Endangered birds, the lesser kestrel, unable

to follow the fixed path to feed near waters.

In the trees next door, berries grow

up the trunk of a pine tree, into the branches,

like a musical score, lilting tempo

against the burl—a pouring out—

say the soul passing into the ethereal,

the lost feeding places, the blind going.