Poetry for April 26, 2007

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day for April 26, 2007

JOY HARJO

THE PATH TO THE MILKY WAY LEADS THROUGH LOS ANGELES

There are strangers above me, below me, and all around me and

we are all strange in this place of recent invention.

This city named for angels appears naked and stripped of anything

resembling the shaking of turtle shells, the songs of human voices

on a summer night outside Okmulgee.

Yet, it’s perpetually summer here, and beautiful. The shimmer of gods

is easier to perceive at sunrise or dusk,

when those who remember us here in the illusion of the marketplace

turn toward the changing of the sun and say our names.

We matter to somebody,

We must matter to the strange god who imagines us as we revolve

together in the dark sky on the path to the Milky Way.

We can’t easily see that starry road from the perspective of the crossing

of boulevards, can’t hear it in the whine of civilization or taste the

minerals of planets in hamburgers.

But we can buy a map here of the stars’ homes, dial a tone for

dangerous love, choose from several brands of water or a hiss of oxygen

for gentle rejuvenation.

Everyone knows you can’t buy love but you can still sell your soul for

less than a song to a stranger who will sell it to someone else for a profit

until you’re owned by a company of strangers

in the city of the strange and getting stranger.

I’d rather understand how to sing from a crow

who was never good at singing or much of anything

but finding gold in the trash of humans.

So what are we doing here I ask the crow parading on the ledge of

falling that hangs over this precarious city?

Crow just laughs and says wait, wait and see and I am waiting

and not seeing anything, not just yet.

But like crow I collect the shine of anything beautiful I can find.

Ukiah’s Choice for April 26, 2007

Yuma Shaman’s Song

Your heart is good

Shining Darkness will be here.

You think only of sad unpleasant things.

You are to think of goodness.

Lie down and sleep here.

Shining Darkness will join us.

You will think of this goodness in your dream.

Goodness will be given to you.

I will speak for it, and it will come to pass.

It will happen here.

I will ask for your good.

It will happen as I sit by you.

It will be done as I sit here in this place.