Let There Be
for Jaiden Peter Morgan
A good poem
is summer
my nephew said
mirage rising
from corn fields
midday
pollen on our tongues
each syllable
flecked with sunbeams
and names not said
shiye’ you should know
the voice isn’t ours alone
but a dwelling space
a hooghan’s
cool inner darkness
before ceremony
it is you
who will heal
these wounds
a good poem
is song
I said
so let there be mountains
singing in all directions
let there be laughter
uninterrupted and innocent
shiye’ what joy you are
naahoniiłt’ąh
nahałtin
náhoolt’ąh
Copyright © 2021 by Manny Loley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 1, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote this poem for my nephew. It is a reminder of home and the bonds that connect us to our homeland and to our people. Poetry, like all forms of storytelling, lives and breathes, reminding us of who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. The essential elements of our humanity can be contained within the space of the page, including Diné concepts, which deepens the poem and reaches inside to the place where the ancestral knowledges dwell. Díí saad naashjaa’ígíí éí shiyáázh bá áshłaa. Nizhónígo bidziil, ayóó’ó’ni’, dóó ajooba’ bee náásgóó naagháa dooleeł.”
—Manny Loley
Manny Loley
Manny Loley is a Diné poet, Salt clan born for Two-who-came-to-the-water clan. Originally from Casamero Lake, New Mexico, on the Diné Nation, he currently resides in Denver, where he is pursuing a PhD in English and literary arts at the University of Denver. He serves as the director of the Emerging Diné Writers’ Institute.