To an Aged Bear

by N. Scott Momaday 

Hold hard this infirmity.
It defines you. You are old.
Now fix yourself in summer,
In thickets of ripe berries,
And venture toward the ridge
Where you were born. Await there
The setting sun. Be alive
To that old conflagration
One more time. Mortality
Is your shadow and your shade.
Translate yourself to spirit;
Be present on your journey.
Keep to the trees and waters.
Be the singing of the soil.

©️ N Scott Momaday

Navarre Scott Momaday was born February 27, 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma, U.S., Native American author of many works centred on his Kiowa heritage. 

Momaday grew up on an Oklahoma farm and on Southwestern reservations where his parents were teachers. He attended the University of New Mexico (A.B., 1958) and Stanford University  M.A.1960; Ph.D., 1963) His first novel House Made of Dawn (1968), remains his best-known work. It narrates, from several different points of view, the dilemma of a young man returning home to his Kiowa pueblo after a stint in the U.S. Army. The book won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

Momaday’s limited-edition collection of Kiowa folktales entitled The Journey of Tai-me (1967) was enlarged with passages of Kiowa history and his own interpretations of that history as The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), illustrated by his father, Alfred Momaday. Native American traditions and a deep concern over human ability to live in harmony with nature permeate Momaday’s poetry which he collected in Angle of Geese and Other Poems (1974), The Gourd Dancer (1976), and Again the Far Morning: New and Selected Poems (2011). 

The Names: A Memoir (1976) tells of his early life and of his respect for his Kiowa ancestors. In 1989 he published his second novel, The Ancient Child, which weaves traditional tales and history with a modern urban Kiowa artist’s search for his roots. In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961–1991 appeared in 1992, Circle of Wonder: A Native American Christmas Story in 1994, and The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages in 1997. In 1999 Momaday published In the Bear’s House, a collection of paintings, poems, and short stories that examines spirituality among modern Kiowa. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2007.