Remember

Remember

By Melissa Soule
Leland and Gray Union High School, Grade 9

This is a found poem, with the first two lines an excerpt from Joy Harjo's " Remember". Born May 9, 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Joy Harjo is an enrolled member of the Muscogee tribe . She is now working as an writer and instrumentalist, performing her own music and teaching at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Remember the sky that you were born under;
remember the stars' stories.
Remember the first breath you took;
the purest of all air.
Remember the scents of changing seasons;
not all memories are limited to a single sense.
Remember the stumbling gait of a determined child;
look back and know yourself.
Remember the child lingering in you;
remember to let her out to frolic.
Remember your first love;
the light shining in their perfect eyes...
Remember your first broken heart, you'll break hearts too, so;
Remember the sensation.
Remember growing up, with all of the growing pains that accompanied the changes.
Remember the life lessons you suffered, learned and loved.
Remember what you love, hold it close;
remember to love life;
You Only Get One.
Remember time, recall it is a variable in life's equation;
irrelevant and irreplaceable.
Remember the beginning, here at the end.