Monday, February 20, 2006

Joy Harjo: Anniversary

(Grading all day, needed some poetry to act as a little pipe cleaner to scrape out the accretions in my neural pathways--the last line smacks me in the face and reminds me of the problem I have with so many other [controlling] creation stories.)

Anniversary
by Joy Harjo

When the world was created wasn’t it like this?
A little flame illuminating a rough sea, a question
of attraction, something fermented, something
sweet? And then a bird or two were added, the crow of course to
joke about humanity, and then another kind so beautiful
we had to hear them first, before our eyes could be imagined.
And it was, we were then—and there was no separation.
The cries of a planet formed our becoming.
We peered through the smoke as our shoulders, lips,
emerged from new terrain.
The question mark of creation attracts more questions...

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