Poet Warrior gave birth to two children
And acquired more children along the way
Through association, marriage, and love.
There were more and more st… - Joy Harjo
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Poet Warrior gave birth to two children And acquired more children along the way Through association, marriage, and love. There were more and more story bringers In her world. They became her fiercest teachers Of how there is no end to love And of how it plants itself Deeper than earth Or sky.
Pass this love on, he'd say. It knows how to bend and will never break. It's the only thing with a give and take, The more it's used the more it makes.
That love is the bridge that will cross the river home. He'd be standing in the dark with no one listening. How time blows steadily through the city, the trees. Sing to this earth, sing, he sang.
(What advice do you have for minority writers who are fighting to be heard or who are struggling for legitimacy in American literature?) Remember that you are born with gifts that need to planted and grown. This "American" culture is young and rootless. It is adolescent with an adolescent sense of time and place that is "here and now," with no reference or power rooted in the earth, ancestors, or historical and mythical sense. Value your community and what that has to offer and continue to reach out beyond what you know to grow fresh ideas, meetings between borders, new roots. (2008)
