My house is the red earth; it could be the center of the world. I’ve heard New 
York, Paris, or Tokyo called the center of the world, but I say it is 
magnificently humble. You could drive by and miss it. Radio waves can 
obscure it. Words cannot construct it, for there are some sounds left to sacred 
wordless form. For instance, that fool crow, picking through trash near the
corral, understands the center of the world as greasy strips of fat. Just ask 
him. He doesn’t have to say that the earth has turned scarlet through fierce 
belief, after centuries of heartbreak and laughter—he perches on the blue 
bowl of the sky, and laughs.

Copyright Credit: Joy Harjo, “Don’t Bother the Earth Spirit” from Secrets from the Center of the World. Copyright © 1999 by The Arizona Board of Regents. Used by permission of The University of Arizona Press.