Joy Harjo Quotes

When Sun leaves at dusk, it makes a doorway. We have access to ancestors, to eternity. Breathe out. Ask for forgiveness. Let all hurts and failures go. Let them go.

WASHING MY MOTHER’S BODY I never got to wash my mother’s body when she died. I return to take care of her in memory. That’s how I make peace when things are left undone. I go back and open the door. I step in to make my ritual. To do what should have been done, what needs to be fixed so that my spirit can move on, So that the children and grandchildren are not caught in a knot Of regret they do not understand.

I always play or perform music with my poetry. When poetry came into the world, it did not arrive by itself, but it came with music and dance.

You took me once
to an older part of earth
I'd never seen — where monsters were born
and killed.
They sacrificed everything
and nothing
for a taste of this
life.

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.

Because who would believe
the fantastic and terrible story of all of our survival
those who were never meant
to survive?

...you pick up the saxophone again, I suppose it's like writing poetry, you are picking up the history of that. Playing saxophone is like honoring a succession of myths. I never thought of this before but: the myth of saxophone and here comes Billie Holiday and there's Coltrane. I love his work dearly, especially "A Love Supreme." That song has fed me. And all of that becomes. When you play you're a part of that, you have to recognize those people. (1993)

Earth is larger than humans in size and consciousness. We're guests on this earth. Humans are just part of a larger creation. If it so happens we were given dominion, or males were-and I don't believe this at all and it's one reason I walked away from the church at thirteen-then we certainly won't have it next time around. We've done nothing but rape the earth of its resources and don't even turn around. We forget to say thank you. (2005)

In a world long before this one, there was enough for everyone,
Until somebody got out of line.

It’s important that, I think, that everyone realizes that they have a connection with the natural world; it’s not something that just belongs to the Indigenous peoples. We might be closer, because we’ve been here longer, to particular elements of it, but, you know, this is something that is inherently part of the legacy of human beings.

We become lost,
Unsteady.
Take a deep breath,
Pray.
You will not always be lost.
You are right here,
In your time,
In your place.

Forever will be a day like this.

I don't see time as linear. I don't see things as beginning and ending. A lot of people have a hard time understanding native people and native patience-they wonder why we aren't out marching to accomplish something. There is no question that we have had an incredible history, but I think to understand Indian people and the native mind you have to understand that we experience the world very differently. For us, there is not just this world, there's also a layering of others. Time is not divided by minutes and hours, and of everything has presence and meaning within this landscape of timelessness.

Time and how are the mysterious elements of any life.

Poetry (and other forms of writing) can be useful as a tool for finding the way into or through the dark. Or a device with which to admire the complexity of the stories in which we have become entangled. Sometimes the only way out is by voice, following the music into the impossible.