Another butterfly poem, this one sad, maybe a contrition yet life in many ways, from Joy Harjo, a native (cross-out) a Muscogee Tribe p (cross-out), a poetess (cross-out), a writer of life. (book is The Woman Who Fell From The Sky)
THE DAWN APPEARS WITH BUTTERFLIES
You leave before daybreak to prepare your husband's body for burial
at dawn. It is one of countless dawns since the first crack of con-
sciousness, each buried in molecular memory, each as distinct as
your face in the stew of human faces, your eyes blinking back force
in the vortex of loss and heartbreak.
I put on another pot of coffee, watch out the kitchen window at the
beginning of the world, follow your difficult journey to Flagstaff,
through rocks that recall the scarlet promises of gods, their intermi-
nable journeys, and pine. Until I can no longer see, but continue to
believe in the sun's promise to return:
And it will this morning. And tomorrow. And the day after tomor-
row, building the spiral called eternity out of each sun, the dance of
butterflies evoking the emerging.
Two nights ago you drove north from the hospital at Flagstaff, after
his abandonment to the grace we pursue as wild horses the wind.
Your grief was the dark outlining the stars. One star in particular
waved to you as you maneuvered in the nightmare of the myth of
death. It broke loose, stammered, then flew marking the place be-
tween the star house of the gods and Third Mesa.
You laughed with the spirit of your husband who would toss stars!
And your tears made a pale butterfly, the color of dawn, which is
the color of the sky of the next world, which isn't that far away.
There is no tear in the pattern. It is perfect, as our gradual return to
the maker of butterflies, or our laughter as we considered the joke of
burying him in the shirt you always wanted him to wear, a shirt he
hated.
Someone is singing in the village. And the sacredness of all previous
dawns resonates. That is the power of the singer who respects the
power of the place without words, which is as butterflies, returning
to the sun, our star in the scheme of stars, of revolving worlds.
And within that the power of the dying is to know when to make
that perfect leap into everything. We are all dying together, though
there is nothing like the loneliness of being the first or the last, and
we all take that place with each other.
In the west at every twilight since the beginning, the oldest spirits
camp out with their dogs. It is always in the season just before win-
ter. It is always shooting star weather and they wash dishes by dip-
ping them in river water warmed in a bucket.
Coffee heats over the fire. Crows take their sacred place. The sun
always returns and butterflies are a memory of one loved like no
other. All events in the universe are ordinary. Even miracles occur
ordinarily as spirits travel to the moon, visit distant relatives, as
always.
Then at dusk they share the fire that warms the world, and sit to-
gether remembering everything, recounting the matrix of allies and
enemies, of sons and daughters, of lovers and lovers, each molecule
of the sky and earth an explosion of memory within us.
In this fierce drama of everything we are at this juncture of our
linked journey to the Milky Way-as your babies stir in bittersweet
dreams while you travel to your most difficult good-bye--as
Grandma lies down with them to comfort them-as your father's
truck starts down the road in the village as a dog barks--
everything is a prayer for this journey.
As you shut the door behind you in the dark:
Wings of dusk
Wings of night sky
Wings of dawn
Wings of morning light
It is sunrise now.
(Joy Harjo's telling of her poem)
I was on my way to Tuba City, located in northern Arizona, the heart-
land of Hopi and Navajo country, and had decided to stop at Second
Mesa to see some friends of mine. Their daughter was going to partici-
pate for the first time in the Butterfly Dance.
I stopped at Rosanda's mother's, who told me Rosanda's husband had
died suddenly of a condition that had been in remission. He was a very
young man. Because he had so looked forward to his daughter's partici-
pation in the Butterfly Dance the family decided to go ahead with their
part in it. They knew that he would be able to see her anyway, that his
spirit was much like a butterfly.
I then found Rosanda and the rest of the family at the plaza with the
dancers.
The next few days unfolded with grief as well as laughter, as the family
prepared for the burial and release of this man who had lived respect-
fully, by telling stories, feeding people, by remembering him.
The afternoon before his burial Rosanda went to pick out the shirt in
which to bury him. She brought a couple into the living room to show
me.
"What do you think of this one?" she asked. "I bought this shirt for him
three years ago. It's my favorite and he would never wear it."
We laughed, thinking of him. wearing the shirt she loved, the shirt he
refused to wear through eternity.
I'm sure he laughed with us. That's the way he was.
(I particularly enjoy "The Creation Story" and the poem whose namesake is the book's title.- wonderful pictures and stories she writes) |
