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Hi, have you taken a deep breath today? Welcome to WNUR News’s new poetry segment where you’ll hear timely poem readings to help you relax, reflect, and reconnect. Per the fall quarter winding to an end, tonight’s selections are about autumn, gratitude, and family.
Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and was named the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2019. Her work centers on themes of remembering and celebrating her past and future ancestors, her home, the earth, and beginnings and endings. Throughout, she weaves themes of Indigenous identity and mythology, feminism, and social justice.
This is “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo.
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The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
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Mary Oliver is one of the most celebrated and widest-read poets. She also happens to have written some of my personal favorite pieces. Her work is beautifully hopeful, observant, and often centered on nature.
This is “Song for Autumn” by Mary Oliver.
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Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for
the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
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Thank you for listening to our new poetry segment. Whether you’re celebrating Thanksgiving or taking time to yourself in the coming days, take a moment to be thankful, celebrate what you love about the season before we enter winter, and think about your own kitchen table.
For WNUR News, I’m Georgia Kerrigan.
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soft synth music by Soul_Serenity_Ambience | Pixabay
Adrift Among Infinite Stars by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au | Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Moonlight by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au | Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
