To the destroyers, Earth is not a person. They will want more until there is no more to steal. - Joy Harjo

Emerging from a story, a poem, the Earth, a time in history, or from the body of our mothers is sometimes explosive, chaotic, frightening, yet always awe-inspiring and humbling. We can use the energy to create fresh structures, or we can destroy or be destroyed. The energy can have power over us or empower us, and even what is destructive might clear the debris so that fresh life can emerge from embers or ashes.

A poem can be like a pocket that can hold anything, almost anything. You can hold different kinds of time. It can hold grief, it can hold history, and it is often — a poem has come to me or through me, and it’s taught me what I needed to know.

AN AMERICAN SUNRISE We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves, We Were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to Strike It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were Straight. Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We Made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could Sing When we drove to the edge of the mountains, with a drum. We Made sense of our beautiful crazed lives under the starry stars. Sin Was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We Were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them: Thin Chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little Gin Will clarify the dark, and make us all feel like dancing. We Had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz I argued with the music as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June, Forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We.