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Not What You Meant?  There are 6 definitions for Anniversary.  Also try: Biennial.

Anniversary Study Guide

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by Joy Harjo
About 29 pages (8,751 words)
Anniversary Summary

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Poem Text

When the world was created wasn't it like this?
A little flame illuminating a rough sea, a question
of attraction, something fermented, something
sweet?

And then a bird or two were added, the crow of
course to
joke about humanity, and then another kind so
beautiful
we had to hear them first, before our eyes could be
imagined.

And it was, we were then—and there was no
separation.
The cries of a planet formed our becoming.
We peered through the smoke as our shoulders,
lips,
emerged from new terrain.

The question mark of creation attracts more
questions
until the mind is a spiral of gods strung out way
over
our heads, traveling toward the invention of sky.

Move over and let us sleep until the dust settles,
until we can figure this thing out.

What was created next is open to speculation or
awe.
The shy fish who had known lonely water
walked out of the ocean onto dry land,
just like that, to another life.

Frog imagined meals of flying things and creatures
in flight imagined hills
of daubed dirt and grass in which to settle and
make others
to follow in their knowledge which they were
building
as sure as houses on the tangled web.

And in that manner we became—elegance of fire,
the waving grass.
And it's been years.

This complete Poem Text contains 222 words. This study guide contains 8,751 words (approx. 29 pages at 300 words per page).

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    Anniversary
    An anniversary (from the Latin anniversarius, from the words for year and to turn, meaning (re)turni... more


     
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    Copyrights
    Anniversary from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

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