The Law — Blackbird Archive

← v21n3, Spring 2023

Unnoticed for over 600 years

in the sky the 39th clause

of the Magna Carta

in small letter-shaped clouds

floated and faded as

they were read aloud

“To no one will we sell,

to no one deny or delay right

or justice.” He wondered

at it all. In the orchard

in May he saw a hive

of bees spelling the whole

of the Declaration in the trees,

the fat queen being the dot

of the i where “We hold

these truths to be self-evident.”

He learned by reading

everything he saw. Rivers

moving slowly in the winter

toward a thaw. Like gold

in the straw. The myriad

faces of strangers. Waterfalls.

Self-taught, he read each

document as natural law.

history politics myth

Steve Scafidi

Steve Scafidi is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), For Love of Common Words (Louisiana State University, 2006), The Cabinetmaker’s Window (Louisiana State University, 2014), To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014) and a chapbook, Songs for the Carry-On (Q Avenue Press, 2013). He has won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the James Boatwright Prize, and the Miller Williams Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he has taught at several universities including, most recently, in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.