Joy Harjo

There are strangers above me, below me, and all around me and
we are all strange in this place of recent invention.

I’d rather understand how to sing from a crow
who was never good at singing or much of anything
but finding gold in the trash of humans.

So what are we doing here I ask the crow parading on the ledge of
falling that hangs over this precarious city?

Crow just laughs and says wait, wait and see and I am waiting
and not seeing anything, not just yet.

But like crow I collect the shine of anything beautiful I can find.

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes, said the next messenger. I
am a human being, I said.