Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
“Remember.” Copyright © 1983 by Joy Harjo from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Dusk and snow this hour in argument have settled nothing. Light persists, and darkness. If a star shines now, that shine is swallowed and given back doubled, grounded bright. The timid angels flailed by passing children lift in a whitening wind toward night. What plays beyond the window plays as water might, all parts making cold digress. Beneath iced bush and eave, the small banked fires of birds at rest lend absences to seeming absence. Truth is, nothing at all is missing. Wind hisses and one shadow sways where a window's lampglow has added something. The rest is dark and light together tolled against the boundary-riven houses. Against our lives, the stunning wholeness of the world.
From Intervale by Betty Adcock. Copyright © 2001 by Betty Adcock. Reproduced with permission of Louisiana State University Press. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2017 by Mark Irwin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 22, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.