We Are Winter Poets Day 8

poems for culture

Good morning friends,

I am writing to you from the Arkansas/Missouri area, where the days are starting to get colder and we can really feel the chill of winter settling in.

I am excited for today’s word, because it sums up so much of Winter’s Gifts, but also speaks to the broader question of so much of my work: culture.

We can take this in so many directions. Of course, I often share about Potawatomi culture, about embracing and celebrating my own people and our stories.

The reality is, we create cultures all the time, as storytellers, as humans, it’s what we know and how we survive in the world.

Here are 2 definitions to get us started:

1. the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.

2. the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.

And interestingly enough, the scientific definition, which could be stretched in a few ways as well:

3. maintain (tissue cells, bacteria, etc.) in conditions suitable for growth.

Here are some images that pop up with a search for the word:

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Photo by Brian McMahon` on Unsplash

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

Photo by Kyle Petzer on Unsplash

So pause a moment and let your mind wander through this idea, whether you’re thinking on your own experience of culture or the general expression of it. Can’t wait to read your poems!

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Culture

We could say we are culture-less, but it simply isn’t true—

every time humans gather, something important forms,

a series of rules, commitments of loyalty, signals of movement.

We create cultures by the passions that stir us, by the

people who walk alongside us, by the stories we tell

to keep everyone else in line when things seem to go wrong.

Culture is power, and power can be used to harm or to heal.

I’ve known many cultures in my life, some of them harming me

without my realizing it, manipulating the way I saw myself and

the sacred in every living thing around me— this culture

took decades to break free of, years to untangle from my body’s home.

Culture is power, and power can be used to harm or to heal.

In the science world, tissues are “maintained in conditions suitable for growth”

and I think, what if I’d been maintained in caring conditions suitable for growth?

What if we all had? 

I look out the window just as Grandfather Sun rises again, his tenderness

a constant balm and reminder that we are always welcome to stop and pause.

I want to create and sustain a culture of tenderness in this painful world.

Don’t you?

Are we allowed to take the culture of power and flip it on its head?

Are we allowed to start over?

Are we allowed to ask Grandmother Moon to guide us home again?

Culture is power, and power can be used to harm or to heal.

I pray to Segmekwe, Mother Earth, that kinship is the future.