Poet's Corner: Remember by Joy Harjo

Here is the 2020 National Poetry Month poster from poets.org. [I had to print and scan to get an image file. A nice pdf is available here.]



The words are taken from the poem "Remember" by the current US poet laureate Joy Harjo (who is a member of the Myskoke/Creek Nation).

Remember by Joy Harjo

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.

My Poem: Original: Old Church: Gen

Title: Old Church
Fandom: Original Work
Lines: 8
Words: 80
Rating: Gen
For: GYWO Yahtzee - Aces
Notes: this is the second half of exercise #6 of The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry which deals with dactylic pentameter.
Prompt:

proud like a ruinous king on a crumbling ash throne
covered in snow and abandoned, unorthodox tombstone
up on a perch the old church can remember the first war
mountains recall all the pillage and pall of the old lore

buried on high, the intolerant graves in the hoarfrost
married to sky, disregarding the staves and the yore lost
harried by naught that’s been wrought, these old knaves in the triptych
serried, forgotten and rotten and laved in the cryptic