When we learn to align our own energy with that of the Earth's, we will move forward effortlessly. When we slow down and allow our senses to open, gr… - Linda Hogan

Each morning when I step outside my door I walk into the Garden of Eden. "O Great Spirit, thank you for this beautiful day." There has not been one day in the past 20 years that I have not started my day this way and really meant it. When you are truly connected to Mother Earth and Spirit, you see as much beauty in a cold, gray, sleety, December morning as a warm, sunny day in June.

Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places. (p53)

For American Indian people the journey home is what tells us our human history, the mystery of our lives here, and leads us toward fullness and strength. These first poems were part of that return for me, an identification with my tribe and the Oklahoma earth, a deep knowing and telling how I was formed of these two powers called ancestors and clay.