A Writing Journey

 Fall Song

by Joy Harjo

It is a dark fall day.
The earth is slightly damp with rain.
I hear a jay.
The cry is blue.
I have found you in the story again.
Is there another word for ‘‘divine’’?
I need a song that will keep sky open in my mind.
If I think behind me, I might break.
If I think forward, I lose now.
Forever will be a day like this
Strung perfectly on the necklace of days.
Slightly overcast
Yellow leaves
Your jacket hanging in the hallway
Next to mine.

(Today, I will use lines from Joy Harjo’s beautiful poem Fall Song as prompts for my slice. Coincidentally, Kim featured Harjo’s poetry recently in her slice. Thanks to Harjo for reminding me of the “song I need” in my life right now.)

I need a song that will bring me back in time to a place that feels like home. To a place where the faces greet me with a familiarity that I cannot deny and the sounds of the voices bring a warmth to my heart that spreads to the tips of my fingers. 

Sometimes I long to remember the moments of the past with the clarity of a movie, all the details replayed exactly as they were. I want to see myself in those moments. I want to feel what I felt in those moments. I want to live in that moment a little longer. Appreciate it. 

The photographs in the albums I scan are like little windows into the past. Familiar reminders of the places I’ve been or the people I’ve met. Sometimes they trigger a memory and sometimes they are the memory all by themselves. The feeling I get when I look into those frozen moments, sometimes calls me home and sometimes there is silence. My memory is selective and I wonder why. Is it age or is it by desire? What do I want to remember? To what moments would I like to return?

The words of the song resonate with me like the ripples on the water when a stone is thrown in. The words release feelings that spread out from me in a chain reaction that I cannot control. Those words have the power to help me travel to a different time or place, to live again those feelings of the past. Or, to imagine what may be one day and allow me to dream again.

Forever will be the day when the words of the song help to ground me not in the past or the future, but in the present moment. Forever will be the day that I am here with you.

Me, my mom and sister; a Christmas a long time ago