We are all in this together

In honor of World Poetry Day, I am sharing a poem I just read in Joy Harjo’s Memoir, Poet Warrior:

A Post Colonial Tale

Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff.

This is the first world, and the last.

Once we abandoned ourselves for television, the box that separates the dreamer from the dreaming. It was as if we were stolen, put into a bag carried on the back of a man who pretends to own the earth and the sky. In the sack were all the people of the world. We fought until there was a hole in the bag.

When we fell we were not aware of falling. We were driving to work, or to the mall. The children were in school learning subtraction with guns.

We found ourselves somewhere near the diminishing point of civilization, not far from the trickster’s bag of tricks. Everything was as we imagined it. The earth and stars, every creature and leaf imagined with us.

When we fell, we were not aware of falling. We were driving to work or to the mall. The children were in school learning subtraction with guns.

The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. We are evidence of this praise. And when we laugh, we’re indestructible. No story or song will translate the full impact of falling, or the inverse power of rising up. Of rising up.

Our children put down their guns when we did to imagine with us. We imagined the shining link between the heart and the sun. We imagined the tables of food for everyone. We imagined the songs.

The imagination conversely illumines us, speaks with us, sings with us, drums with us, loves us.

–Joy Harjo, first Native American to serve as U.S poet laureate.