Thursday, August 08, 2013

Thursday Poem - Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On

This morning when I looked out the roof window
before dawn and
a few stars were still caught
in the fragile weft of ebony night
I was overwhelmed. I sang the song Louis taught me:
a song to call the deer in Creek, when hunting,
and I am certainly hunting something as magic as deer
in this city far from the hammock of my mother’s belly.
It works, of course, and deer came into this room
and wondered at finding themselves
in a house near downtown Denver.
Now the deer and I are trying to figure out a song
to get them back, to get all of us back,
because if it works I’m going with them.
And it’s too early to call Louis
and nearly too late to go home.

Joy Harjo (From How How We Became Human: 
New and Selected Poems 1975-2002)

4 comments:

Barbara Rogers said...

I am really touched by this. Beautiful photo that does the poem justice.

Shelley said...

Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous!

Also, if I drive from Elmira, NY to Toronto, ON, how close will I be to you? (We're going to a conference in Toronto this fall...)

the wild magnolia said...

So many stars, how did you manage such a capture? Stunning.

Candid poem, ease of story, human perspective.

kerrdelune said...

Sigh, it was out in the Lanark countryside where there is are no urban lights to spoil the darkness, just the moon and stars so bright one can almost reach up and touch them. There are some fabulous moons out there, and many are in autumn.