What Will You Say that You Found Here? (Cento of lines from Joy Harjo’s collection AN AMERICAN SUNRISE)
You are breath
made of the finest woven light
the mouth of the dark with its shiny moon teeth
You will not always be lost
There are always flowers
for the land is a speaker
of the worship places
Story will always find you
take you over the edge
Someone is always leaving
You grow tired of the heartache
The heart is a fist
caught in a knot of regret
Memory, pieces of gold confetti,
opens all the doors of our hearts
a way to dance through the heavy mess
In the immense house of beauty and pain
each of us is a wave in the river of humanity
Make an alliance
with its thousand arms
You must be friends with silence to hear
winds becoming words
the raw stalks of beginning
a singing tree
every cell of creation opening its mouth
to sing us into love
like a seed falling where there is
a song emerging from the floods
In the song of beyond, how deep we are
in the fog of hope
14 thoughts on "What Will You Say that You Found Here? (Cento of lines from Joy Harjo’s collection AN AMERICAN SUNRISE)"
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Karen, this is incredible.
Thank you, Coleman!
Ah, a Cento!! This one is rich with meaning–a credit to the source material!
Thanks, Ellen!
I love this, Karen. So many beautiful lines, and the way you weave them together is equally beautiful.
Thanks, Gwyneth!
You’re such a master of this kind of poem. Wonderful.
Thank you, Kevin!
Wonderful poem, Karen. Some great phrases!
I don’t know how you do it, Karen. I want to be a bird sitting on your shoulder sometime and watch you at it. The last stanza works particularly well:
“every cell of creation opening its mouth
to sing us into love
like a seed falling where there is
a song emerging from the floods
In the song of beyond, how deep we are
in the fog of hope”
Thanks, Nancy!
“the mouth of the dark with its shiny moon teeth”
Some of my favorite phrases:
the mouth of the dark with its shiny moon teeth
Story will always find you/take you over the edge
the raw stalks of beginning
every cell of creation opening its mouth/to sing us into love
I could go on, but suffice it to say, this is lovely.
“to hear the wind becoming words…”
Yes. I feel it.