Eagle Poem
Please enjoy this poem with me.
This is “Eagle Poem” by Joy Harjo. Joy is a truly inspired poet. She is Native American and offers blessing after blessing through poetic word.
The Native American mind is akin to the Celtic mind. More expansively, all traditions that sit humbly within the embrace of Nature and tune the listening function to the whispers of God through the material of Creation are all related. These spiritualities are cousins of one another.
The Eagle was particularly sacred to the Christian Celts. They held John the disciple as a manifestation of the Eagle symbol and that Eagle also held John symbolically and truth-fully. The idea of “the Word made flesh” is Eagle truth for the Celts. I hear that same truth resonating through the Native American mind.
As the Eagle circles in this lovely poem, please read it slowly and prayerfully. Hear the resonance of Eagle truth, the Word to you. Read the poem several times, slowing each time, so that you can hear your own soul speaking it back to you.
-Kirk Webb, Director of the Celtic Center
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.
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