Peridyd's Progress

I went to a wonderful conference presentation on the poetry of activism this week. During it, I was reacquainted with the poems of Joy Harjo, which I hadn't read for awhile. Harjo's poetry is deep, blissful, and full of caring, yet it is never superficial or afraid to enter the domains of personal or collective suffering or joy.

Without further commentary, then, I'll share one of the poems read during the workshop.

Anchorage
for Audre Lorde

This city is made of stone, of blood, and fish.
There are the Chugatch Mountains to the east
and whale and seal to the west.
It hasn't always been this way, because glaciers
who are ice ghosts creat oceans, carve earth
and shape this city here, by the sound.
They swim backwards in time.

Once a storm of boiling earth cracked open
the streets, threw open the town.
It's quiet now, but underneath the concrete
is the cooking earth,
                                  and above that, air
which is another ocean, where spirits we can't see
are dancing                 joking                 getting full
on roasted caribou, and the praying
goes on, extends out.

We keep on breathing, walking, but softer now,
the clouds whirling in the air above us.
What can we say that would make us understand
better than we do already?
Except to speak of her home and claim her
as our own history, and know that our dreams
don't end here, two blocks away from the ocean
where our hearts still batter away at the muddy shore.

And I think of the 6th Avenue jail, of mostly Navie
and Black men, where Henry told about being shot at
eight times outside a liquor store in L.A., but when
the car sped away he was surprised he was alive,
no bullet holes, man, and eight cartridges strewn
on the sidewalk
                            all around him.

Everyone laughed at the impossibility of it,
but also the truth. Because who would believe
the fantastic and terrible story of all of our survival
those who were never meant
                                                 to survive?