OCEAN POWER

Words cannot speak your power. Words cannot speak your beauty. Grown men with dry fear in their throats watch the water come closer and closer. Their driver tells them, "It's just the ocean, it won't get you, watch it, it will roll away again."

Men who had never seen the ocean it was hard not to have the fear that sits in the pit of the stomach. Why did they bring us this way? Other times we crossed on the desert floor. That land of hot dry air where the sky ends at the mountains. That land that we know. That land where the ocean has not touched for thousands of years. We do not belong here, this place with the sky too endless. This place with the water too endless. This place with air too thick and heavy to breathe. This place with the roll and roar of thunder always playing to your ears.

We are not ready to be here. We are not prepared in the old way. We have no medicine. We have not sat and had our minds walk through the image of coming to this ocean. We are not ready. We have not put our minds to what it is we want to give to the ocean. We do not have cornmeal, feathers, nor do we have songs and prayers ready. We have not thought what gift we will ask from the ocean. Should we ask to be song chasers Should we ask to be rainmakers Should we ask to be good runners or should we ask to be heartbreakers. No, we are not ready to be here at this ocean.

— When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through by Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster (Page 305 - 306)