☀Today's Poem: "For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet" Joy Harjo

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March 29, 2020

In light of the Coronavirus crisis, please join Poetry Daily for an impromptu series, What Keeps Us. For the rest of March we will post poems to sustain and uplift through trying times. We thank you for reading and hope that you will share poems with your friends and neighbors. Please be well.

For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet

Joy Harjo

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that
bottle of pop.
Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.
Open the door, then close it behind you.
Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth
gathering essences of plants to clean.
Give it back with gratitude.
If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and
back.
Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were
a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.
Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the
guardians who have known you before time, who will be
there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there
without time.
Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.
Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people
who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought
down upon them.
Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises,
interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and
those who will despise you because they despise themselves.
The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few
years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.
Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and
leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the
thieves of time.
Do not hold regrets.
When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning
by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.
You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.
Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.
Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders,
your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your
ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our
direction.
Ask for forgiveness.
Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take
many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or
ancestor.
Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and
creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.
You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.
Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return
in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be
happy to be found after being lost for so long.
Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and
given clean clothes.
Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who
loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no
place else to go.
Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.
Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way
through the dark.

from the book CONFLICT RESOLUTION FOR HOLY BEINGS / W. W. Norton & Company

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Thanks so much to all our readers, donors, poets and publishers who have supported our work at Poetry Daily. Please be safe, wash your hands, and stay inside if you are able.

Mark Doty Encounters Whitman at Home
"Does seeing an apparition come with a responsibility? Gift or summons, what might this echo of Walt Whitman want of me? There may be many answers to that question, but I’d begin with this one, the same thing he wanted from us when he was living: company."

via GUERNICA

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What Sparks Poetry:
Aaron McCullough on William Carlos William's "This Is Just To Say"
"The poem is ultimately more about what isn’t there (the plums, the speaker, respect for the beloved’s property) than it is about what was there momentarily (the sensual pleasure of something “so sweet / and so cold” or the speaker’s remorse, however genuine)."

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