Saying a prayer before dinner with poetry

My guest this week on Poetry from Daily Life is Heather Lende, who lives in Haines, Alaska. Alaska has a Writer Laureate rather than a Poet Laureate and Heather, who has just finished a term in that role, is mostly a prose writer. “But I admire poetry,” she says, “the brevity and emotion of it, and I read it every morning to begin my day.” Heather prefers informal interviews to writing down her opinion. She is more at home being helpful than being “preachy.” A unique fact about her is that she survived being run over by a Chevy 3/4 ton pick-up truck! ~ David L. Harrison

“When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken to everything in the universe.”

– John Muir

I bought a new flashlight for my dinner date last night, since even though it was early — 5:30 p.m., it is so dark now in Alaska that my head lamp doesn’t light beyond my boots. With all the clouds and no snow cover yet, it feels even darker. Sunrise hardly lived up to the name today.

My neighbor’s cabin is down a long, steep trail to the beach, and a good light was definitely required to reach it. I walked with two other friends and their puppy, so that was helpful. I carried a bag with sliced pears, cheddar and crackers (I had asked, what can I bring? Appetizers, they said), slippers (leave your boots at the door), a bottle of wine (of course …) and a copy of Sherry Simpson’s book "The Way Winter Comes." It’s a great book that not a lot of people, even Alaskans, have read. She died too young and is missed. It’s good that her words remain.

Before dinner we five friends (all between 49 and 76) held hands while our host said a blessing. It has always been easy for us to say grace when there are children present. My husband and I have kept the nightly habit since our kids left home. We have taught our grandchildren to hold hands and give thanks. But with company — especially mixed faith or no faith company, how do you do it? Jesus said not to pray in public. That we should go into a room and close the door and talk to God in private.

The blessing turned out to be a poem. Joy Harjo’s "Remember."

Our host read the whole thing. It was such a brave and intimate action. His voice wavered a couple of times and we squeezed hands tighter. It’s hard to voice your heart, and yet something so good to do. It’s a miracle that a poem written by a Native American woman from Oklahoma moves the heart of a Jewish man in Haines, Alaska.

The meal with friends was a gift too, and no, we didn’t really talk about the election. Instead, we discussed local history, Native Alaskan traditions we admire, and fishing (we were eating salmon the commercial fisherman in the group caught last summer), the Chilkat River, and the joy of dogs, what with the puppy and all.

I did not grow up holding hands and reading poems at the dinner table. My family were “stiff upper lip” white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants from the North Shore of Long Island. We never held hands when we said grace, and it was always the same. No free verse for us. But, oh, I am so happy that I can choose to pray with poetry now, and that I live among people who encourage such things. It’s another way to do good in this world. Like a smile for a stranger. Like the tiny puff of a breeze from those butterfly wings that blows around the world, or the ripples from a stone dropped in the ocean. Like John Muir’s cords that bind us to everything in the universe and remind us to love one another. We are more alike than different.

Remember

By Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star’s stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother’s, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe. Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

❖❖❖

In addition to her writing, Heather Lende has held various roles within the literary and local community. She had a long running column in the Anchorage Daily News, served as a contributing editor for Woman’s Day magazine and has written approximately 400 obituaries for the Chilkat Valley News. To learn more, go online to https://www.heatherlende.com/bio/.