For Keeps by Joy Harjo
For Keeps
Joy HarjoSun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.
SELECTED BY RIO CORTEZ
As a person whose work deals with ancestry and history, but also simply as a person, any person, who has felt the pull and tug of what came before, of what made us, this poem really moved me.
For me, the whole thing bursts open at that first question, where have you been? The feeling of being remembered and known, whether you know it or not, that you belong someplace, was overwhelmingly joyous. It hits almost like a deep relief somewhere in the body. And then, of course, the promise of forever. The acknowledgement of the mystery. It just doesn’t get better.
ABOUT RIO CORTEZ
Rio Cortez is the author of Golden Ax (Penguin Poets, 2022), as well as the picture book The ABCs of Black History (Workman, 2020). Her chapbook I Have Learned to Define a Field As a Space Between Mountains won the 2015 Toi Dericotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. Her other honors include a Poets & Writers Amy Award, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, Canto Mundo, The Jerome Foundation, and Poet’s House. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Cortez holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University and currently lives in Harlem.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo, published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“A long-awaited poetry collection by one of our most essential Native American voices.
In these poems, the joys and struggles of the everyday are played against the grinding politics of being human. Beginning in a hotel room in the dark of a distant city, we travel through history and follow the memory of the Trail of Tears from the bend in the Tallapoosa River to a place near the Arkansas River. Stomp dance songs, blues, and jazz ballads echo throughout. Lost ancestors are recalled. Resilient songs are born, even as they grieve the loss of their country. Called a “magician and a master” (San Francisco Chronicle), Joy Harjo is at the top of her form in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.” (Source)
ABOUT JOY HARJO
Joy Harjo was appointed the United States poet laureate in June 2019, and is the first Native American poet laureate in the history of the position. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951, Harjo is a member of the Muscogee/Creek Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years (W. W. Norton, 2022); An American Sunrise (W. W. Norton, 2019); The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (W. W. Norton, 1994),… (more)
Read more poems by Joy Harjo • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- This is Day 65 of Poems We Carry, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry—a living archive I’ve nurtured for two decades. For this milestone series, I invited writers I deeply admire to share poems that have meant something to them over time.
- Explore other works in pursuit of: ancestry • belonging • homecoming • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
