Two weeks ago, I was in the Wyoming mountains. And this week, I’m at a place I have long loved — North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
These are the last weeks of my “road sabbatical.” I’ll be speaking again in mid-September after taking a six-month break from onsite engagements. In these final road sabbatical days, my poetic guide for reflection has been Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and former Poet Laureate of the United States.
Although I was up late last night watching the political convention, I woke up very early this morning and walked on the beach. At dawn, I sat by the sea and read Harjo’s poem, “A Postcolonial Tale,” from Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light.
A few moments later, as the sun rose over the ocean, I took the photograph below.
The poem and image sing together. I hope you find the pair as meditative and moving as I did at first light — every day is a reenactment of the creation story.
A Postcolonial Tale
by Joy Harjo
Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff.
This is the first world, and the last.
Once we abandoned ourselves for television, the box that separates the dreamer from the dreaming. It was as if we were stolen, put into a bag carried on the back of a man who pretends to own the earth and the sky. In the sack were all the people of the world. We fought until there was a hole in the bag.
When we fell we were not aware of falling. We were driving to work, or to the mall. The children were in school learning subtraction with guns.
We found ourselves somewhere near the diminishing point of civilization, not far from the trickster’s bag of tricks. Everything was as we imagined it. The earth and stars, every creature and leaf imagined with us.
When we fell, we were not aware of falling. We were driving to work or to the mall. The children were in school learning subtraction with guns.
The imagining needs praise as does any living thing.
We are evidence of this praise.
And when we laugh, we’re indestructible.
No story or song will translate
the full impact of falling,
or the inverse power of rising up.
Of rising up.
Our children put down their guns when we did to imagine with us.
We imagined the shining link between the heart and the sun.
We imagined the tables of food for everyone.
We imagined the songs.
The imagination conversely illumines us, speaks with us, sings with us, drums with us, loves us.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing a bit more about what I’ve learned in the last six months and how this time is reshaping my writing and work. It has been a time of surprising awakenings, personal transformations, a passion for silence, and shifting priorities.
I’m seeing things differently.
I hope you’ve sensed some of that in my posts of recent months. Thank you for being good companions along this journey’s way.
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.
― Kate Chopin
It’s not easy to write about an experience beyond the power of words to convey but this poem did that.
Arthur Pitz
Thank you. The photo and poem left me breathless.