Caroline Kennedy Shares Joy Harjo

Caroline Kennedy has done so much to promote the arts in our country. I am sure her father encouraged her, but most of the inspiration and love for the arts came from her mother. Caroline has put together five poetry anthologies celebrating the art of poetry. ( note: The Patriot's Handbook and A Family Christmas also includes songs, stories and speeches)Each time I look through one of my copies, I love the photos of her sitting reading with her mother, or posing in a chair reading to her teddy bear, or sitting side by side with her father. There is not a poem in all the volumes I don't love. It is hard to pick a favorite to share. I chose the following from her latest collection "She Walks In Beauty, A Woman's Journey Through Poems".

Eagle Poem

BY JOY HARJO

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright © 1990 by Joy Harjo. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press,
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.

I am also pleased I found this again tonight because I feel strongly it is a poem my students will connect to when we return to school Monday.