Granddaughters
By Joy Harjo
I was a thought, a dream, a fish, a wing
And then a human being
When I emerged from my mother's river
On my father's boat of potent fever
I carried a sack of dreams from a starlit dwelling
To be opened when I begin bleeding
There's a red dress, deerskin moccasins
The taste of berries made of promises
While the memories shift in their skins
At every moon, to do their ripening
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2019 by Joy Harjo, “Granddaughters” from An American Sunrise (W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.)