Morning Prayer

“I have missed the guardian spirit

of Sangre de Cristos, those mountains against

which I destroyed myself every morning I was sick

with loving and fighting in those small years.

In that season I looked up to a blue conception of faith

a notion of the sacred in the elegant border of cedar trees

becoming mountain and sky. This is how we were born into the world:

Sky fell in love with earth, wore turquoise, cantered in on a black horse.

Earth dressed herself fragrantly, with regard for aesthetics of holy romance.

Their love decorated the mountains with sunrise, weaved valleys delicate with the edging of sunset.”

- Joy Harjo, from “Morning Prayers”