Promise of Blue Horses

A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning,

then the sun--

relating the difference between sadness

and the need to praise

that which makes us joyful. I can't calculate

how the earth tips hungrily

toward the sun--then soaks up rain--or the density

of this unbearable need

to be next to you. It's a palpable thing--this earth philosophy--

and familiar in the dark

like your skin under my hand. We are a small earth. It's no

simple thing. Eventually

we will be dust together, can be used to make a house, to stop

a flood or grow food

for those who will never remember who we were, or know

that we loved fiercely.

Laughter and sadness eventually become the same song turning us

toward the nearest star--

a star constructed of eternity and elements of dust barely visible

in the twilight as you travel

east. I run with the blue horses of electricity who surround

the heart

and imagine a promise made when no promise was possible.


By Joy Harjo -- From The Woman Who Fell From the Sky