the throat of the mountains

And lastly, today's poem, which takes my breath away each time I read it.

a woman can't survive
by her own breath
                   alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night winds
who will take her
into herself

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am the continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the mountains
a night wind
who burns
with every breath
she takes

—Joy Harjo, "Fire," from What Moon Drove Me to This?, 1979 (Reed Books). Joy Harjo is a poet I should have been posting for years, but I only (embarrassingly) read her for the first time this year. There are many more of her poems to come, I think.