Authors: Naomi Shihab Nye
A Maze Me (5 page)
Tree frogs, we were born wrong.
Why didn't we get a song like you?
Something we could all sing together?
In the big dark, strumming our throats?
All night, branches alive outside our screens,
you paddle the long boat,
nothing could sink
on a note like yours.
I'd press myself against that twisty bark,
be part of the leaves.
I'd shrink, stretch free
of these heavy syllables,
curving perfectly into chorus,
something we could all sing
together, yes
light up our backyard.
A bird that flew five thousand miles
is trilling six bright notes.
This bird flew over mountains and valleys
and tiny dolls and pencils
of children I will never see.
Because this bird is singing to me,
I belong to the wide wind,
the people far away who share
the air and the clouds.
Together we are looking up
into all we do not own
and we are listening.
Something True
at dawn
on the sidewalk
a single shiny crow
pecking the stringy heart of a
pumpkin
exactly the same color as
sky
My uncle comes home from Siberia
describing the smoked caribou leg
still wearing its hoof
left on the drainboard
week after week,
small knives slicing
sour red flesh.
He becomes a vegetarian.
But he misses the spaciousness.
It wasn't crowded up there.
He ran into a polar bear
the same way you might run into your
mailman around the block.
My teacher returns from China
obsessed by the two-string violin
and the tiny birds in lattice cages.
She plays a tape
as we do our silent reading.
My whole family comes back from Paris
asking why we live anywhere else.
Every interesting person
and tucked neck scarf
looked full of stories.
People paused for peach tarts and crepes
in the middle of the afternoon.
My grandfather comes home
from Palestine
older.
He has been in the camps.
He can't stop aching.
After Mexico, my neighbor Lupe
misses intense color,
won't wear beige anymore.
She prefers papayas sliced
with lime juice drizzled on top.
She feels happy every time she faces south.
Forty years ago this postal window
far far far from any city
closed for good.
Where did everyone go?
Wooden cubbyholes
bear family names:
Wilson, Gibbs, Ramirez, Talley.
Someone has mailed them
dust.
Puff of wind
special delivery
and a little smoke rises.
Hello?
How much hope
how many thin slivers
long whistles
linen envelopes
found you here?
Did you ever go a year
without mail?
Beyond us every direction
desert   mountains   sky
write letters back and forth all day.
Tarantula scribbles a stone.
Fat-tailed fox signs with a flourish.
People aren't your kind anymore:
Wilson, Gibbs, Ramirez, Talley.
We're not that tough.
We have a car and bottles of water.
Each other's voices holding us up.
In some places
you can feel
perfect bird-lit air
with human talk nudged up against.
Talk and the velvet drapery of silence.
Deep evening echoes stitched by doves.
That's how I want to talk.
Not
chatter chatter chatter.
Well, sometimes
chatter chatter chatter
but also solid as adobe without cracks.
Also,
water in the well.
Listen listen listen.
Hard to put together the pink hems
of sunrise and sunset
and the talkers on TV.
People beat talk into a froth.
Whip it up like a beverage.
We not only
say
but say we're going to say
and say we said.
O kiss the silent ground!
The cool place under the bummiest cactus!
There was a cat with no tail
darted out from behind a yucca this morning
little gray sparrow snagged in his teeth
shamelessly doing what he was born to do
and NOT ONE WORD.
We forget about the spaciousness above the clouds
but
it's up there.
The sun's up there too.
When words we hear don't fit the day,
when we worry
what we did or didn't do,
what if we close our eyes,
say any word we love
that makes us feel calm,
slip it into the atmosphere
and rise?
Creamy miles of quiet.
Giant swoop of blue.
In the dining car, the couple from New Jersey
pressed their faces to the windows, anxious
for what they had waited all their lives to see,
the Pecos River and its high, brave bridge.
Good thing it is light,
my dad said.
The sun had just risen.
When did you first start thinking about it?
So long ago!
They stared at one another, shining.
West of the Pecos, such wonderful words!
Because that is the wild true land
beginning from there,
from the tall cliffs and the green river gash,
unfolding west, the land is stronger than anything,
it is the old song of land and air
we have never gotten to sing.
And we who had seen it many times
faced the glorious window
filled with the breaking light of day.
The little girl
with a floppy purple hair ribbon
coughed her way
across the Atlantic.
She coughed every 30 seconds
for seven whole hours.
No wonder she was fussy
before the plane took off,
pulling her father's pant leg,
and whining.
Something had gotten into her,
a whale trapped in her tiny lungs,
a restless pressing dolphin,
and she would be tied into a seat
for hours while it tried to get out.
She never once covered her mouth.
I felt angry at her father and mother
who seemed not to have discovered
cough syrup, cough drops,
or hot tea with lemon and honey.
38,000 feet below us
waves were roiling up
from a deep darkness in the sea
and fish who do not mind the cold
were gliding around in secrecy.
Dear Mona, do you know
how your old stucco building
marks the spot of Something True?
Your hand-lettered red sign rises up
like a crooked, friendly flag.
I can guess the menu:
bean & cheese, potato & egg,
maybe a specialty of your own making,
avocado twist or smoky salsa.
Your
nombre
is nice.
One taco might be enough.
You feed the ranchers who just lived through
the worst drought and flood back-to-back.
They touch the brims of their hats
when they see you.
Don't we all need someone to greet us
to make us feel alive?
West of town, soft fields
ease our city-cluttered eyes.
There's a rim of hills to hope for up ahead.
Mona, mysterious Mona,
I don't have to eat with you to love you.
Every morning I think,
Mona's up
.
Argument
is a room I won't enter.
Some of us
would circle a whole house
not to enter it.
If you want to talk like that,
try a tree.
A tree is patient.
Don't try me.
Don't ever say
there's nothing to see
in Ruidosa.
That's mean.
If you are really Texas
or Minnesota or North Dakota
or Georgia or Ohio
you should know
there's something strong to see
everywhere.
Over
and out.
1
The land waits for rain to write on it.
Pool of birdseed, ring around the moon.
Night, that beautiful dark broom,
sweeps the day away.
2
But people are still fighting.
Far off, where we can't see or hear them.
We can barely imagine
our own familiar neighborhoods
blowing upâpoof!
Everything being broken or gone.
So dumb!
No kid in the world wakes up hoping
people will fight around her house
or inside it either.
3
Electric networks
under the thin skin of hours,
ticking, stretchingâ¦
Two jackrabbits pause
in the long grasses of the orchard
side by sideâ¦
I want to talk truly as a rooster . . .
Hide inside a pocket of days . . .
4
My mind
is always
open.
I don't think
there's even
a door.
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