Poetry Friday: Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye

I've been a bit under the weather lately (better now) and have posted infrequently, but I want to be sure to share this lovely poem by Naomi Shihab Nye for today's Poetry Friday. Nye has just been named the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecturer 2017 by the ALSC, and she is a role model for all of us - as a poet, as a citizen, and as a child of immigrants. [July 2017 update: Nye's Arbuthnot lecture will be delivered in Bellingham, WA., my new home town! ]  BTW: Snow on the ground tonight in Seattle!

TWO COUNTRIES

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers—silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

Poetry Friday: Yes, Of Course, the Book of Nature Poetry!

What a wonderful job J. Patrick Lewis did selecting poems for his new anthology, The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry. I was thrilled to see two of my favorite Undersung poets included, Adrien Stoutenberg and Robert Francis, as well as excellent contemporary children's poets like Joyce Sidman (her strange Moeraki boulders splayed by waves "like a spill of fallen / moons in sliding / surf") and Naomi Shihab Nye (in the Badlands, with "Everyone's emptiness made elegant, / even the bison, and black-footed ferret, / even the woman, even the man.")  Lewis also included many poems not written specifically for children, which is such a smart decision - love to see such poets as John Clare, Wendell Berry, James Wright, John Keats, Edward Thomas - and even D.H. Lawrence!  And 'natch, how exciting to see poems from all the Poetry Friday friends.

Here is the one poem I have in the book. As published, there was an editing glitch in the last line. Here's the correct version:

Mammatus Clouds

Thunder coming with its usual heavy hammer
    and the sky strange, bubbled
    with clouds, the air humming
    and warning us away.
Tornado coming today with its terrible trouble
    and the sky pouched,
    pockets of ice and water waiting
    for their own best moment to burst.
Hard weather coming, for the worst reasons:
    warm air, cool air, thermal instability,
    wind shear, sublimation---
    we cotton to the calmest explanations.
Something coming. Could be okay, could be misery---
    who knows which or why?
    Look at that sky, filled with questions marks,
    every mark a mystery. 

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Today's round-up is being hosted by Janet and Sylvia at Poetry for Children. Head over there to see what other people have posted!    And I have a post today over at Books Around the Table - musings about trees, tree roots, and learning to love the bumps in the road.

Poetry Friday: A Blessed Illusion for the New Year

Antonio Machado and his wife, Leonor.

For the new year, here is a poem from Antonio Machado. I found it while reading Naomi Shihab Nye's lovely collection, HONEYBEE,  in preparation for my January residency lecture at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Nye uses Machado's poem as an epigraph to her book, guiding the tone and musical key of her own poems.

Last  night I dreamed -- blessed illusion --
that I had a beehive here
in my heart
and that the golden bees were making
white combs and sweet honey
from my old failures.

          --Antonio Machado
             Translated by Robert Bly


"Old failures" - I can think of many of my own. But here's wishing us all a 2013 filled with white combs and sweet honey. 

Naomi Shihab Nye with her father, Aziz Shihab

P.S. When I read interviews, I'm often impressed by the intelligence of the people being asked questions, but I don't usually find myself thinking, "This person would be a lovely friend." In the case of of this interview of Nye, I did think so.
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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today over at Carol's Corner. Head over there to see what other people have posted.