There were no Native names in the American book of poetry when I began writing poetry, though there are many. - 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.

On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson unlawfully signed the Indian Removal Act to force move southeastern peoples from our homelands to the West. We were rounded up with what we could carry. We were forced to leave behind houses, printing presses, stores, cattle, schools, pianos, ceremonial grounds, tribal towns, churches. We witnessed immigrants walking into our homes with their guns, Bibles, household goods and families, taking what had been ours, as we were surrounded by soldiers and driven away like livestock at gunpoint.

There were many trails of tears of tribal nations all over North America of indigenous peoples who were forcibly removed from their homelands by government forces.

The indigenous peoples who are making their way up from the southern hemisphere are a continuation of the Trail of Tears.

May we all find the way home.

Time and how are the mysterious elements of any life.