exploring Native American Poems about Nature: Wed. Sept 4, 3 Pm

Poetry Foundation online <poetryfoundation.org> : “Native American Poetry and Culture, A selection of poets, poems, and articles exploring the Native American experience.”

Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She earned her BA from the University of New Mexico and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Harjo draws on First Nation storytelling and histories, as well as feminist and social justice poetic traditions, and frequently incorporates indigenous myths, symbols, and values into her writing.

Eagle Poem:

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

N. Scott Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, to a father of Kiowa Indian heritage and a mother of European and Cherokee heritage. He spent much of his childhood on Navajo, Apache, and Jemez Pueblo reservations in the Southwest, where his parents taught. He earned his BA from the University of New Mexico and a MA and PhD from Stanford University. His first novel House Made of Dawn (1968) won a Pulitzer Prize and brought attention to Momaday as a leading figure in a Native American literary renaissance.

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

I am a feather on the bright sky

I am the blue horse that runs in the plain

I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water

I am the shadow that follows a child

I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows

I am an eagle playing with the wind

I am a cluster of bright beads

I am the farthest star

I am the cold of dawn

I am the roaring of the rain

I am the glitter on the crust of the snow

I am the long track of the moon in a lake

I am a flame of four colors

I am a deer standing away in the dusk

I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche

I am an angle of geese in the winter sky

I am the hunger of a young wolf

I am the whole dream of these things

You see, I am alive, I am alive

I stand in good relation to the earth

I stand in good relation to the gods

I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful

I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte

You see, I am alive, I am alive

Maurice Kenny: (1929-2016) During the 1970s and early 1980s, Kenny was increasingly active in Native American activism, having undergone an awakening to the extent and significance of his own Mohawk identity in the wake of the Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. He founded the Strawberry Press in 1976 to publish Native American writers. He died at Saranac Lake, NY. at the age of 86.

First Rule:

Stones must form a circle first not a wall

Open so that it may expand

To take in new grass and hills

Tall pines and a river

Expand as sun on weeds, an elm, robins;

The prime importance is to circle stones

Where footsteps are erased by winds

Assured old men and wolves sleep

Where children play games

Catch snow flakes if they wish;

Words cannot be spoken first

As summer turns spring

Caterpillars into butterflies

New stones will be found for the circle;

It will ripple out a pool

Grown fro the touch

Of a water-spider’s wing;

Words cannot be spoken first

That is the way to start

With stones forming a wide circle

Marsh marigolds in bloom

Hawks hunting mice

Boys climbing hills

To sit under the sun to dream

Of eagle wings and antelope;

Words cannot be spoken first

Sweetgrass:

Seeded in the mud on turtle’s back

Greened in the breath of the west wind

Fingered by the children of the dawn

Arrowed to the morning sun

Blessed by the hawk and the sparrow

Plucked by the many hands in the laughter

Of young girls and the art of old women

You hold the moments of the frost and the thaw

You hold the light of the star and the moon

You hold the darkness of the moist night

And the music of the river and the drum

You are the antler of the deer

You are the watery fire of the trout

You are the grunts and groans

The whimpers and whistles of the forest

You are the blood of the feet

And the balm for the wound

You are the flint and the spark

You are the child of the loins

And the town of the armpit

You are the rock of the field and the great pine of the mountain

You are the river that passes in the burnt afternoon

You are the light on the beak and the stump

And the one-legged heron in the marsh

You are the elk in the snow

You are the groundhog and the bear

You are the claw of the muskrat

You are the ache in the spine

Yet the scent of summer

You are the plum and the squash and the gooseberry

The flower of the bean

You are the bark of the house

You are the rainbow

And the parched corn in your woven basket

You are the seed on my flesh

And I am the flesh of your seed

Sherman Alexie A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member, Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. Alexie was born hydrocephalic and underwent an operation at six months of age; he was not expected to survive. Though he lived through the experience, he was plagued with seizures as a child and spent most of his childhood reading. In 1990 Alexie’s work was published in Hanging Loose magazine, a success he has credited with giving him the incentive to quit drinking. He has remained sober ever since. In his short-story and poetry collections, Alexie illuminates the despair, poverty, and alcoholism that often shape the lives of Native Americans living on reservations.

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam

and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive

and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam

downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you

that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find

their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific

and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive

and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon waiting in the Pacific.

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall

after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia

and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors

of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall

after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River

as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives

in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after

that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws

a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire

which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told

by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall

after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon

who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us

how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;

the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many

of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing

with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.