Tradition and history inspire interactive UTSA 50th anniversary poem

rippling through these feathers

By Carmen Tafolla

Because this poem is not only me

Because this poem is not only you

Because we breathe air breathed out by another

And our atoms are built from the atoms of others

Because we scrape the skin of our dreams

to find inside them the dreams of others

This poem will require that you write it too

That you fill it with

the depth of your meanings

That you soar through its spaces

with the strength of your wings

That the rich tone of colors

rippling through these feathers

sing the various verses

of changing the world 

A plume scratched on white paper     Fifty years ago

A feather danced in ceremony     Five hundred years ago

A crown of feathers shivered on the bright and prescient mind

Twelve thousand years ago

All witnessed by this ground beneath our toes

and the crumbling huesos of the camposanto within it

They call us here to search horizons

boundless dreams rippling through these feathers 

Insert here: Your vision, your moment of highest flight

of happiest reach of things imagined

The coolness of the wind inspiring your breath

each feather a sky strong

All of us move forward, a País of Paisanos

Unique and United, Growing as we Learn

Pride ripples like delicious wind

supports these wings we’ve shaped together

Hope and Power

rippling through these feathers