Misty Days

I’ve shared some verse before of Joy Harjo, the first Native person to serve as the U.S. Poet Laureate and is in her second term. Here are excerpts from two poems from her 2015 book Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. Accompanied by (with one exception) images from the southeast U.S. where her Muscogee (Creek or Mvskokvlke) people lived.

Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, Kentucky

Forever (a song)

In the night of memory

There is a mist

In the mist is a house.

It’s the heart where we lived.

. . . .

East Rim Overlook, Big South Fork NRRA

Once I was broken by time.

There was no house in the mist.

I lost sunrise. I lost your fire against mine.

A country was falling and falling.

. . . .

Newfound Gap, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

I crossed time to the house in the mist.

It is not any house; it’s the heart where we live.

. . . .

from Forever (a song), Joy Harjo in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, 2015

(the link is to the entire poem)

And now, excerpts from Surfing Canoes

White Sands National Park, New Mexico

We’ve felt the winds surf the waves

Alongside the canoe

This is where joy lives

Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina

This moment of earth breath

Lifting up with us

Letting us go with us

. . . .

From, Surfing Canoes, Joy Harjo in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, 2015

Cumberland Trail, Obed National Wild and Scenic River, Tennessee

One more image, and bit about history. I’ve driven I-75 near Macon, Georgia dozens of times on trips between Florida and Illinois. A couple years ago, for the first time I pulled off to visit nearby Ocmulgee National Historic Site and was gob smacked by the ancient mound builder site that is a spiritual location for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. This week, the National Park Service announced a purchase and donation to double the size of the park. Humans inhabited this area for 17,000 years, and it is the largest archeologic dig in U.S. history. The Muscogee (Creek) lived here until they were removed to Oklahoma in 1826 by the Treaty of Washington.

Great Temple Mound, Ocmulgee National Historic Site, Georgia

Illinois Meditations

On a sunny autumn morning, Chance and I hiked up Illinois Canyon at Starved Rock State Park to the tiny waterfall and large pool at the head of the canyon. We were alone, and I got lost photographing the colors and forms in the water as the fall leaves floated slowly toward the stream that emptied the pool.

I hope you can enjoy the stillness and beauty of this morning and imagine what you want in these images. I will also share some parts of three poems from Roberta Hill Whiteman. She was a professor of English and American Indian Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison until she retired last year, and is an enrolled member of the Oneida.

. . . Through their songs,

the wind held on to visions.

We still help earth walk

her spiral way, feeling

the flow of rivers

and their memories of turning

and change.

From These Rivers Remember, Roberta Hill

. . .

In their songs, the wind held

on to visions. Let’s drop our burdens

and rest. Let’s recognize our need

for awe. . . .

From These Rivers Remember, Roberta Hill

. . .

Sit where there’s a center

and a drum, feel the confluence

of energies enter our hearts

so their burning begins to matter.

. . .

From These Rivers Remember, Roberta Hill

. . .

This is Maka co-ka-ya kin,

The Center of the Earth.

From These Rivers Remember, Roberta Hill

I hope you can take a few minutes and let her read the entire poem to you. The full text of the poem is also found on this Library of Congress link. She then goes on to offer some of her background and of this poem. She mentions that she lived on Roberts Street in St. Paul in the 80s and 90s, and that was the address of the NTEU local I would work at often in Minnesota during that time.

. . .

Yet within this interior, a spirit kindles

moonlight glittering deep into the sea.

These seeds take root in the hush

of dusk. Songs, a thin echo, heal the salted marsh,

and yield visions untrembling in our grip.

. . .

From Dream of Rebirth, Roberta Hill

. . .

I dreamed an absolute silence birds had fled.

The sun, a meager hope, again was sacred.

We need to be purified by fury.

. . .

From Dream of Rebirth, Roberta Hill

The National Park Service announced this week that it is partnering with the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association

to help facilitate regular, robust and meaningful dialogue between Tribes and the NPS. Strengthening relationships with Tribal governments is a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris Administration and this partnership will ensure that the perspectives, voices and traditions of indigenous communities are incorporated into exhibits, outreach and cultural tourism programs in national parks.

. . .

as if without a history, I should always walk

the cluttered streets of this hapless continent.

Thinking it best I be wanderer,

. . .

From In the Longhouse, Oneida Museum, Roberta Hill

. . .

I rode whatever river, ignoring every zigzag,

every spin. I’ve been a fragment, less than my name,

shaking in a solitary landscape,

like the last burnt leaf on an oak.

. . .

From In the Longhouse, Oneida Museum, Roberta Hill

You can read the full text of In the Longhouse, Oneida Museum at the Poetry Foundation website. Each of these poems are also in the anthology When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through compiled by U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo which you can get for Native American month in November.

I hope you enjoyed the visit to the pool by Illinois Canyon.