It was all connected, this poetics of listening, word making, and dancing. There was power to transform, to lighten the heaviness of the burden of be… - Joy Harjo

FIRST MORNING for Shan Goshorn, December 3, 2018 This is the first morning we are without you on earth. The sun greeted us after a week of rain In your eastern green and mountain homelands. Plants are fed, the river restored, and you have been woven Into a path of embracing stars of all colors Now free of the suffering that shapes us here. We all learn to let go, like learning how to walk When we first arrive here. All those you thought you lost now circle you And you are free of pain and heartbreak. Don’t look back, keep going. We will carry your memory here, until we join you In just a little while, in one blink of star time.

her eyes closed against some
unimagined darkness, where she is buried in an ache
in which nothing makes
sense.

These are the ones who escape
after the last hurt is turned inward;
they are the most dangerous ones.