Templates

Your father gathered what was left
after the birth, slick sack of salt
and blood coloring his hands
warm from my body. He couldn’t help 
that it felt the same as when I took him
inside me, drew him out of himself 
to be joined with what we were making. 
At the edge of our small orchard
he settled the plum seedling
he’d started three years before, 
snugged roots in the hole to eat
the placenta. The part of you 
you didn’t need fed the tree, 
and when you turned six, 
you ate from the branches. 
Your small hands clasping the dark 
shiny skin as you bit the saffron flesh, 
juice dribbling at chin, smell as sweet
as the sugar you were born in.

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.

Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

Don’t worry.

The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

***
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1951, and is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She is the author of several books of poetry, including An American Sunrise, and Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. She was the United States poet laureate from 2019-22 the dark. 

This is what you shall do;
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known
or unknown
or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons
and with the young
and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season
of every year of your life,
re-examine all you have been told
at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem
and have the richest fluency not only in its words
but in the silent lines of its lips and face
and between the lashes of your eyes
and in every motion and joint of your body.

The night my father died
I sat in my office
And looked at the stack
Of books
I had authored, which I had poured
My life’s spirit into, but which
Would mean little to me during
My last hours

Just a stack of objects, one on top
Of another, easily removed

Biodegradable

Family was the one thing you could
Leave behind, which would grow
And prosper without you,
Not the thoughts
You had once, the stories you
Told, your particular point of view

Still, once my father
Was buried, I did not seek out a wife and
Produce the children who would save
Me from oblivion, I kept
Scribbling and typing and building small
Worlds in my mind
Which brought me
Momentary peace, it was all
I was capable of, by habit, by inclination

Now I suspect that either way, the result is
The same, you come into the world
And then pass out again, does the world need
More books or does it need more children?
The turning earth remains neutral
On the question

they called Céline a Nazi
they called Pound a fascist
they called Hamsun a Nazi and a fascist
they put Dostoevsky in front of a firing
squad
and they shot Lorca
gave Hemingway electric shock treatments
(and you know he shot himself)
and they ran Villon out of town (Paris)
and Mayakovsky
disillusioned with the regime
and after a lover’s quarrel,
well,
he shot himself too.

Chatterton took rat poison
and it worked.
and some say Malcom Lowry died
choking on his own vomit
while drunk.
Crane went the way of the boat
propellor or the sharks.

Harry Crosby’s sun was black.
Berryman preferred the bridge.
Plath didnt light the oven.

Seneca cut his wrists in the
bathtub (it’s best that way:
in warm water).
Thomas and Behan drank themselves
to death and
there are many others.
and you want to be a
writer?

it’s that kind of war:
creation kills,
many go mad,
some lose their way and
can’t do it
anymore.
a few make it to old age.
a few make money.
some starve (like Vallejo).
it’s that kind of war:
casualties everywhere.

all right, go ahead
do it
but when they sandbag you
from the blind side
don’t come to me with your
regrets.

now I’m going to smoke a cigarette
in the bathtub
and then I’m going to
sleep.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by pain and moaning for release
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.