"Eagle Poem" By Joy Harjo
The poem that I chose for this paper is called "Eagle Poem" by Joy Harjo. As soon as I read this poem, I knew that I liked it. The first line says, "To pray you open your whole self / To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon / To one whole voice that is you" (674). This one line in itself means a lot. It's telling a person to open up to anyone and anything. It's saying that people should always keep an open mind about things. People don't necessarily need to agree with everything, but they just need to know that others have different opinions about different things. This poem also tells how there is much more to life then what a person knows. There will always be more to learn, more to find out. People don't necessarily have to tell a person about something new. A person can find out for themselves by listening and watching the things around them. In the poem, she talks of an eagle flying over Salt River. Watching the eagle made people realize that there are precious things in life and that everything should be handled with the "utmost care" (675). In line 17 the author says, "Breathe in, knowing we are made of / All this, and breathe, knowing / We are truly blessed because we / Were born, and die soon within a / True circle of motion, / Like eagle rounding out the morning / Inside us" (675). This says that all people must not take life for granted. We must all take time to stop and look, and listen, and feel everything that is around us. We must not take things for granted. We must be grateful for everything that we have.
When I think of an eagle, I think of peace. I think of freedom. I think of my country. When reading this poem, there were two different things that came to mind. The first was my boyfriend because he is an eagle scout. This made me think of how special and rare an eagle is. There are not many boy scouts that become eagle scouts anymore. It makes me very proud of my boyfriend that he became an eagle scout. When I...
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