At Haak’u
Within the community,
on the land, in it, and of it,
there is a way in all things
that Acoma (Haak’u) children are taught.
Shadruukaʾàatuunísṿ
It is a way of saying.
It is a way of saying our life and the way
things grow and grow. It is a way of saying
the children are growing so quickly. It is a way
of saying the plants, which we so lovingly care
for in the fields, are growing and growing.
It is a way of saying neither would grow and grow
without
our love.
Amuu’u haats’i. It is a way of saying our beloved life.
Our beloved land.
Our beloved children and community.
Sráamí. It is not always easy. And we, the People, the
Hánʾu are not always good and right. But the right and good
way is the way
that we go that we might live. Srâutsʾímʾv. Srâutsʾímʾv, say
the Ancestors, our old ones, speaking up from the land
from the rivers, in and through the rain, and all the cycles
of the earth we know. Srâutsʾímʾv, children. Do you know
just how much we love you and are praying for your lives?

Copyright © 2021 by Sara Marie Ortiz. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 22, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Iyáaní. It means all things. It means our shared and precious life. It means the spirit that is imbued in all life, in all human people, in all natural elements, in all things that are; it is the breath and pulse that reverberates at the core. Even as an urban Native person, especially this, this remembrance is carried with me always, no matter where I am. We are taught from the time we are born as Acoma people that to comport ourselves as good, respectful, kind, and giving people is the right way and that we might have a good life if we choose and choose again this right way. We are taught to listen closely and remember well the old teachings—so many of them marking an ancestral arc, an arc still present in us, so many of them marking an ancestral knowing that we’ve carried for all time that we might survive as the people. This poem, and really all I write, is an iteration of this future-ancestral arc.”
—Sara Marie Ortiz