Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Wednesday, May 19th, 2021.

Today's poem is by a poet who was born on May 9th, so during this same month seemed appropriate

to hear from her. Her name is Joy Harjo. She is an American poet. She's also a musician and a playwright

and an author, and she is the incumbent United States Poet Laureate. She was

the first Native American to hold that honor and only the second person ever to be the poet laureate

for three straight terms. She is a member of the Muskogee Nation and is an important figure in

Native American literature of the 20th century.

She's written several collections of poetry, and I hope you'll check those out.

Most recently was an American sunrise, which came out in 2019, and is a wonderful book.

So today what I'm going to do is read a poem called Once the World Was Perfect.

It was published in 2015

as part of a book called Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, which is itself a wonderful poem,

a very interesting poem and one I hope you'll check out. So here it is, once the world was

perfect. I'll read it once, say a few things about it and then read

it again. Once the world was perfect and we were happy in that world. Then we took it for granted.

Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.

Then doubt pushed through with its spiked head,

and once doubt ruptured the web, all manner of demon thoughts jumped through.

We destroyed the world we had been given for inspiration, for life.

Each stone of jealousy, each stone of fear, greed, envy, and hatred put out the light.

No one was without a stone in his or her hand.

There we were, right back where we had started.

...