Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light by Joy Harjo

Author:Joy Harjo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2022-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

TOBACCO ORIGIN STORY

It was way back, before there was a way back

When time threaded earth and sky

Children were conceived, were born, grew, and walked tall

In what we now call a day.

Every planted thought grew plant

Ladders to the stars, way back, before there was

No way back, Miss Mary Mack

We used to sing along the buttons of her

Dress. Our babies are always

Our babies. Even back then when time waved through

The corn. We knew our plants like

Relatives. Their stories were our stories, there

Were songs for everything then,

For every transformation

For that first couple, a young Mvskoke man

And woman, who walked through the

Shimmer of the early evening.

They had become as one song.

They lay down when it was dark. I can hear their

Intimate low-voice talking

How they tease one another with such gut love.

Earth makes a bed, with pillow

Mounds. And it is there as the night insects sing

They conceived their first child. They

Will look back as they walk East toward the sunrise

The raw stalks of beginning

Will drink the light, root deeply dark into earth.

In the tracks of their loving

The plant child emerges, first the seed head, then

Leafy, long male body and the white female

Flowers of tobacco, or

Hece, as the people called it when it called

To them. Come here. We were brought

To you from those who love you. We will help you.

And that’s how it began, way

Back, when we knew how to hear the songs of plants

And could sing back, like now

On paper, with marks like bird feet, but where are

Our ears? They have grown to fit

Around earbuds, to hear music made for cold

Cash, like our beloved smoke—

Making threaded with addiction and dead words.

Sing this song back to me girl.

In the moonlight tobacco plant had silver

Moon buttons all up her back.

We’re getting dressed to go plant new songs with words.

Our sun is dimming faster.

Mvto hece, mvto hvse, mvto—

Ekvnvcakv, mvto ah

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