Poet Warrior

by Joy Harjo

For the poets, dreamers, visionaries, and risk takers who planted light in the field of darkness so we could rise up

For the water spider, who, when the earth was covered with water, carried an ember on her back so we could make fire to keep the story going.

“You’re coming with me, poor thing. You don’t know how to listen. You don’t know how to speak. You don’t know how to sing. I will teach you.”

You will learn how to make Right decisions by making wrong ones.

Even a country can be like a lost child because it may have no roots in the earth on which it has established itself.

Growing memories and the ability to access memory is a skill that allows access to eternity.

Humans are not the only ones with a spirit, they reminded. Nor are we more important than everyone else.

We did not have the numbers, guns, or laws to stand up to the immigrants who believed that everything of the earth was given to them because they were God’s chosen people.

Before removal, our people were walking the tightrope of history. Immigrants were flooding illegally into our homelands, staking claims to our lands and houses even as we occupied them.

According to the Old Ones, it is all occurring now. Time is a weave, like a DNA spiral moving within, through us, and around us. It is always changing.

We are all here to serve each other. At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge.

I began to follow all of my thoughts and was surprised how many didn’t belong to me. And how many had threads to ancestors, relatives, strangers, even plants, elements, and animals.

I loved words. How they felt in my mouth. I would taste them. Sing them. I would experiment saying them over and over, frontward and backward, for the way sound felt in my mouth and ears, and for the rhythms as they moved through my body.

My failures have been my most exacting teachers. They are all linked by one central characteristic, and that is the failure to properly regard the voice of inner truth. That voice speaks softly. It is not judgmental, full of pride, or otherwise loud. It does not deride, shame, or otherwise attempt to derail you. When I fail to trust what my deepest knowing tells me, then I suffer. The voice of inner truth, or the knowing, has access to the wisdom of eternal knowledge. The perspective of that voice is timeless.

Grow poetry in the debris left behind by rage. Plant so there is enough for everyone to eat. Make sure there is room for everyone at the table. Let all of us inhabit the story, in peace.

Every drug has a spirit. It has roots. And like any living thing, it craves life and will search for a way to live.

I was learning that you cannot save anyone unless they want to be saved. You could lose everything, even yourself, in your failed efforts.

“Be exactly who you are,” they tell her, “in your becoming.”

You are becoming in a time in which you will see the world turn upside down before it is renewed, they tell her.

The Old Ones had given her a woman’s name. She would now be called “Poet Warrior”

Even a poem can be a ritual, as can a song, or a book.

Everyone has a story. Even the monster has a story.

WE KEEP OUR VIBRATION HIGHER by prayer, by kindness, by taking care of what we were given to do, by cleaning ourselves of negative thoughts that originate within or come from others, by cleaning with water, by humility, by being in the real world, away from concrete and square buildings, by speaking only that which holds truth.

We were the lost children of the boarding school generation, the children of those stolen as babies from their parents’ and grandparents’ arms. Somehow, we made it through those years.

We take care of the songs; the songs will take care of us.

The hard parts teach us how to live, so we will know without a doubt what we carry.

There’s historical trauma we all carry. Some of us carry a heavier part of the burden, So that the rest of the family doesn’t suffer as much—

The best teachers are exacting. There is no end to learning.

It’s time that Native nations’ early influences in American poetry be recognized.

The Earth, and all beings, are always moving toward healing.

You always have a choice, and when it is truly your guidance, your spirit, there is no force.

We will plant songs where there were curses.

With my arrow’s silence I resisted, I wasn’t conquered From silence I formed my weapon To battle the enemy.