Anonymous: "Song for Going to the Water" [Cherokee]

If your heart is not well,
If your spirit is not well,
These words may help you.

Wake in the hour
Just before dawn.
Wake in the hours
Before first light.
Wake when the animals of the night
Have ended their songs,
When the animals of the day
Have not yet begun their songs.

Walk without words.
Follow the path
That leads to the stream.

Then, as the first light
Touches the stream,
Bend to the water,
Speak these words:

"Long Person, I come to ask your help."

Then hold up
A cup of that water
And drink the dawn.



"Song for Going to the Water," purportedly from the Cherokee tradition. Text as published in ISTEP + English/Language Arts Test Preparation and Practice Workbook, Glencoe Language Arts Grade 7, Teacher's Annotated Edition (The McGraw-Hill Companies, undated).

Art credit: "River Stour [near Wimborne] at Dawn," photograph by Andrew Child.

Anonymous: Untitled ["When the wind blows"]

When the wind blows
        that is my medicine

When it rains
        that is my medicine

When it hails
        that is my medicine

When it becomes clear after a storm
        that is my medicine




Untitled ["When the wind blows"] by an anonymous source. Text as published in Prayers for Healing: 365 Blessings, Poems, & Meditations from Around the World, edited by Maggie Oman (Conari Press, 2000).

Curator's note: Following Oman, the attribution is anonymous, but this might be a Blackfoot (American Indian) song. The stories behind it vary. For example, this eyewitness account presents it as a collection of four songs sung during a Blackfoot ceremony by "the Thunder Medicine Man" in the presence of James White Calf, in 1901. In this account it is described as the song of Holy Woman, granted in the medicine vision of a man named Wolf Collar, in 1870.  

Art credit: Untitled photograph of a storm clearing over a patch of beargrass in Glacier National Park, Montana (USA), the traditional homeland of the Blackfeet Indians. Photographer unknown.

Anonymous: "Samurai Song, 14th Century"

[Curator's Note: This poem, or song, is sometimes called "The Warrior's Creed." It's found widely on the Internet, in various forms, without indication of source. Whether the poem is actually what its title suggests, I can't say. If you have any information concerning its origins, please share.]





I have no parents:
I make the heaven and earth my parents.

I have no home:
I make awareness my home.

I have no life and death:
I make the tides of breathing my life and death.

I have no divine powers:
I make honesty my divine power.

I have no means:
I make understanding my means.

I have no secrets:
I make my character my secret.

I have no body:
I make endurance my body.

I have no eyes:
I make the flash of lightning my eyes.

I have no ears:
I make sensibility my ears.

I have no limbs:
I make promptness my limbs.

I have no miracles:
I make right action my miracle.

I have no principles:
I make adaptability to all circumstances my principle.

I have no tactics:
I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.

I have no talent:
I make ready wit my talent.

I have no friends:
I make my mind my friend.

I have no enemy:
I make carelessness my enemy.

I have no armor:
I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.

I have no castle:
I make immovable mind my castle.

I have no sword:
I make absence of self my sword.

"Samurai Song, 14th Century" by Anonymous.

Image credit: Sketch by Shamsul Bahari (originally black and white).