Remember

Joy Harjo (1951 – ) ↗

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Notes

After Audre Lorde's insistence on speaking despite fear, Joy Harjo's Remember asks us to look further back, toward the people, places, and histories that made our existence possible. The poem moves from parents and ancestors to the earth, the sky, and the stars, gradually expanding our sense of belonging beyond the individual life. We often think of ourselves as separate beings moving through the world, yet so much of who we are comes from things that existed long before us. Memory becomes a way of recognizing these connections, and the self begins to appear less like something fixed and more like a meeting point of countless lives, histories, and relationships. For October, Harjo offers another way to understand decay. The body will age, familiar places will change, and generations will pass, but something of each life continues through what it has touched and shaped. Even as things disappear, we remain part of a world that carries their traces. #October #JoyHarjo #Remember #Decay #Poetry

About the author

Joy Harjo ↗

Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a seventh-generation Monahwee daughter. Additionally, Harjo is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.