Friday, January 23, 2009

When Your People Have Been Uprooted



When your people have been uprooted

from a land that carries your stories and history
You learn to carry that land in your heart.
And then you learn the depth of that heart,
and know that it is deep enough to carry
the land that you imagined, and the imagining
of the land of those who were forced to leave.
Any strife and pain from that tearing away ebbs away here.
A regenerative love is struck and rooted here.
And no matter the twist and turn of rough fate,
we exist here, in this heartland
with our stories and the spirits of those stories,
still guiding us along the way.
And these stories grow, just as we do.
They live, they die, they are reborn again in the spring.

September 17, 2007
c Joy Harjo

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