(June 6, 2019) – Carmen Tafolla, professor emerita in the UTSA Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies and the 2015-2016 Texas Poet Laureate, wrote a poem to celebrate the past and future dreams discovered by the many who call UTSA home. Tafolla read “rippling through these feathers” at the 50th Anniversary Commemoration in front of the Alamo on June 5, 2019. Everyone in attendance received a feather lapel pin to commemorate the significant moment in UTSA history.
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
Audience whisper:
rippling through these feathers
rippling through these feathers
