Origin Song

I came to be in a chorus
of ancestors, thousands humming
their mantra of inscrutable melodies—
like vibrations on strings bowed by God.

Such notes, centuries old, dance
with me now, rhythms of other lands
tiptoe across intercontinental tightropes.
But it is the wordless tunes that move the air

with their pitch and rhythm. This
air and its movement is what we call
breath, spirit, ruach, pneuma, Geist, vzduch.
These words, though, dewdrops

some take to be pearls,
burst in their effort
to define how we came to be.

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Nancy K. Jentsch’s poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Feed the Holy, Kentucky Monthly Magazine and Still: The Journal and her collection Between the Rows debuted in 2022 (Shanti Arts). A historic home in rural northern Kentucky and the three generations of family that live on adjoining properties there afford her a bounty of inspiration for her writing.