Listen Here (9 page)

from
With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems
(1968)

They saw her walk a quiet way
Of household tasks from day to day;

They saw her tend her flower plots
Bordered with blue forget-me-nots;

And thought that all her footsteps went
On paths of peace and deep content.

They did not know that in her heart
Were lands no human hand could chart,

An alien land; rebellion-fed,
Where wild plum blossoms rioted.

from
With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems

When my grandmother wept she did not weep
Head on her folded arms, but all the while
She'd go about her work, and tears would creep
Slowly as though an inch a hard-won mile.

Their passing made no inroads on her face:
Her cheeks were smooth, the lips firm to her will;
And inked in her eyes' blackness, one could trace
The spirit yielding but unbroken still.

She spoke no word. She seemed to go away
Within herself to some deep silver well
Hewed in the granite years of yesterday,
Water of wisdom pooled in memory's spell.

From this deep well, to which each one must go
Alone…alone return, she came back to us then
The smile triumphant on her face—as though
Tears never were…would never be again.

from
With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems
(1968)

Above the crested waves of summer heat
Cicada's needles dart unceasingly,
Threading a strand of beaded notes complete
And sparkling as a jeweled rosary,
Along the Nile a thousand years ago,
Sifting its sands, children would stop at play
And root brown feet to hear this tremolo
Of needles clicking—as I do today.

And all who will may hold this jeweled strand
And thread the maze of vanished years to find
That always-summer, ever-childhood land
Within the meadow reaches of the mind
Where golden moments float, untold, along
Uncharted channels—timeless as this song.

from
With Thorn and Stone: New and Selected Poems
(1968)

Death never was a match for me,
So light my feet, so river-strong
My coursing blood. My enemy,
As life and I rushed on headlong,
Could only follow, dark and grim,
Because I could outdistance him.

But someday in a haunted wood
Of fog and twilight days, when
Time Has blanched my flesh and slowed my blood,
Death will outrun me on the climb.
Then I will face him, take his hand,
Murmur his name, and call him friend.

from
Love-Vine
(1953)

A thousand times I've climbed this curving stair;
A thousand times, a hundred moods and more:
Climbed it in hate, in sorrow and in prayer—
The heart low kneeling, or on wings that soar.
I climbed it on my wedding day, the night
Death made his call, as though to Calvary;
And for such simple things as a better sight
Of dawn or sunset gilding earth for me.

And one would almost think this curving stair
Would show the scars, some crying evidence
Of all the hundred moods it was made to share:
Keen, piercing grief, or joy, deep and intense.
But all it shows of my life's sun and shade
Are smooth-worn treads my climbing feet have made.

(January 24, 1936–)

A seventh-generation Appalachian native who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Marilou Awiakta grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with a unique heritage that places her mountain and Cherokee roots in the context of the birthplace of atomic energy. Her earliest experiences, she explains, helped her to blend her love of nature with the nuclear science of her hometown community, which was an exciting “frontier environment where anything seemed possible…. I could study molecules one morning and pick blackberries the next.” She gives her parents credit for helping her learn to value family stories, Appalachian traditions, and classic literature. She currently makes her home in Memphis, Tennessee.

Earning her B.A. degree in French and English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, as well as living in France from 1964 to 1967 (where she was an interpreter and her husband, Paul Thompson, was a medical officer for the United States Air Force) honed the poet's sensitivity for language. She has been a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction since the early 1960s. Her prose and poetry have appeared in many magazines, literary journals, and a number of literary anthologies both in America and abroad. Awiakta has received the Distinguished Tennessee Writer Award (1989), the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature (1991), the Award for Educational Service to Appalachia (1999), and the
Appalachian Heritage
Writers Award (2000).
Selu
was a 1994 Quality Paperback Book Club Selection. An audio tape of
Selu
, read by Awiakta with music by Joy Harjo, received a Grammy nomination in 1996.

She is a longtime advocate of mixing poetry, prose, music, and graphic art. As she explained in 1977, “I believe the day will come when we will simply behold a work of art and not be concerned whether it is a poem, a sculpture, a painting or even a machine, like a space rocket. Everything becomes poetry on the highest level of consciousness. And humanity may reach that level—if we don't blow ourselves up first!” Central concerns in her writing include ecology, preservation of Native American and Appalachian cultures, feminism, nuclear energy, cultural diversity, and family.

Awiakta is the author of a poetry collection and a novella. Her third book,
Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom
, combines poetry and prose. Like a Cherokee basket, it weaves together history, autobiography, native legends and traditions, poetry, and themes of environmentalism, science, botany, gender issues, politics, and spirituality. Celebrating the interconnectedness of life, Awiakta advocates that readers relate the wisdoms of the Corn-Mother Selu (pronounced “say-loo”) to similar wisdoms in their own cultures and return to a relationship with earth and with each other that provides more “balance and harmony” in our lives. Her book offers us “seed thoughts” for the twenty-first century.

Novella:
Rising Fawn and the Fire Mystery
(1983).
Poetry and prose:
Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom
(1993),
Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet
(1978).
Autobiographical essay:
“Sound,” in
Bloodroot
(1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 41-51.

Thomas Rain Crowe, “Marilou Awiakta,”
Interviewing Appalachia
(1994), 215–35. Joyce Dyer, “Marilou Awiakta,” in
Bloodroot
, 40. Grace Toney Edwards, “Marilou Awiakta: Poet for the People,” in
Her Words
(2002), ed. Felicia Mitchell, 19–34. Ruth Yu Hsiao, “Awiakta,”
The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing In the United States
(1995), 90. Parks Lanier, Jr. review of
Selu, Appalachian Journal
21:3 (spring 1994), 326–27. Jerold J. Savory, review of
Selu, Southern Humanities Review
(spring 1995), 198-200. Alexander Vaschenko, review of
Selu, North Dakota Quarterly
(summer 1995), 229–32. John W. Warren & Adrian McClaren,
Tennessee Belles-Lettres
(1977), 109–13.

from
Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet
(1978, 1995)

Women die like trees, limb by limb
as strain of bearing shade and fruit
drains sap from branch and stem
and weight of ice with wrench of wind
split the heart, loosen grip of roots
until the tree falls with a sigh—
unheard except by those nearby—
to lie…mossing…mouldering…
to a certain softness under foot,
the matrix of new life and leaves.
No flag is furled, no cadence beats,
no bugle sounds for deaths like these,
as limb by limb, women die like trees.

from
Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom
(1993)

When the people call Earth “Mother,”
they take with love
and with love give back
so that all may live.

When the people call Earth “it,”
they use her
consume her strength.
Then the people die.

Already the sun is hot
out of season.
Our Mother's breast
is going dry.

She is taking all green
into her heart
and will not turn back
until we call her
by her name.

from
Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom
(1993)

Young women, listen to me—
I'm talkin' to you.
Don't come down here before your time.
It's dark and cold.
Nothin' doin' down here
but the Grandmothers sayin'

“Anorexia Bulimia!
Tell the young women this for us:
They bound our feet
and our toes busted out—
to travel on, test new waters.
They bound our breasts…
our nipples busted out,
infra-red eyes to take in
what the other two miss.
When they bound our middle
rib 'n hip busted the stays
  took the waist with 'em—
  free as they were born.

But now, young women—
now…
They've got your soul in a bind,
  wounded, wound up
in electronic wire and hard paper twine
that cut images into your brain,
unnatural images sayin'
‘Starve yourself to suit us.
Starve your body.
Starve your power.
Starve your dream—
thinner and thinner—
until
YOU
vanish.'

They want you to do that
'cause if you was to take on weight
you might start throwin' it around.
No way can They handle
a full-grown woman
with a full-grown dream. No way.”

Listen young women,
the Grandmothers and Anorexia Bulimia
are talkin' to you—
  Feed your body.
  Feed your soul.
  Feed your dream.
  B
UST OUT
!!!
   —For Judy (1966-1992)

A Time to Reweave
*

*
Note: “A Time to Reweave” and “A Time to Study Law” are excerpts from “Womanspirit in the High-Tech World,” an address given at the First National Women's Symposium, 1989, sponsored by the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Northeastern State University.

The 1990s will be the decisive decade, when humanity will either call Earth “Mother” again or perish. To survive, we must reconnect the Web of Life. People of reverent spirit everywhere are saying it: scientists, theologians, educators, artists, poets, sociologists, the man and woman next door, the kindergarten child who, when asked his greatest wish, said “I don't want to die.” It is a time to reweave, a time when women are coming into our own. As Native people often say, “The Grandmothers are coming back.”

Whatever our ethnic, cultural or religious roots may be, women since the beginning of time have been “weavers,” weavers who work from a spiritual base. We know how to take diverse strands of life and spin them into a pattern. How to listen to the whole web at once and mend small tears that occur. If the web should be damaged beyond repair, women, like our sister the spider, know how to ingest the remaining strands and spin a new web.

We
are
doing that. Consider women across the country who represent major strands of the web: women working in health, history, government, law, literature, family, holistic healing, spirituality, economics, education, art, conservation, and so on. Diverse in many ways, we are unified in our determination to ensure the continuance of life. There are men who support us in our work, as we so often support them in theirs. This cooperative trend among women and between genders is a hope for the future.

But in the worlds society at large, people who call Earth “it” are still dominant and still rending the web at a deadly rate. Contending with them, with their disdain virus and the damage it causes, can be very wearying. That's why I've given you a corn seed for remembrance—a gift from Selu, the strong, who fed the people in body and in spirit. Although eternally giving, she brooked no disrespect, not even inappropriate curiosity (much less sexual harassment). When disrespect occurred, she quit cooking and gave the law instead. This is a principle worth pondering for women today.