Morning Birds

BY Naomi Shihab Nye

Crisscrossing in trees
high notes branch to branch
watery tumble of sound even in summer drought
they find one another      not sky
nor another parched night
can separate or silence them

Your mother
running down tall stairs
to greet another day
still dressed as a hundred year old hajji
filled with chattering joy
Would you follow her?
Even in a dream I hoped

Absence makes no sense
more present than the men I see
tell me anything
please

What you wanted and didn’t get
more haunting than everything that happened
someone leaves an open drawer
space in the drawer
field of mind shimmers with
an almost never arrived
keeps us walking everywhere we have to

Bow down to what you planted
this year small glossy figs fill the bowls
sweetness a rebuke to battle and bomb
all the ruins humans make
Given so few clues —
we bow to what is gone
what continues to grow

 

Biography

Born in 1952 to a Palestinian father and an American mother, NAOMI SHIHAB NYE grew up in Texas, St. Louis and Jerusalem. For the past thirty-five years, Nye has established her reputation as an inspiring educator, committing herself to teaching cultural tolerance, diversity and a common humanity through writing.

She has authored books in various genres for adults and young children, including You & Yours (BOA Editions, 2005), A Maze Me: Poems for Girls (Greenwillow, 2005), 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (HarperCollins, 2002), Red Suitcase (BOA Editions, 1994), Words Under the Words (The Eighth Mountain Press, 1995), Mint Snowball (Anhinga Press 2001), Never in a Hurry (University of South Carolina Press, 1996), and I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are you Okay? (HarperTeen, 2007), among others. Nye is a regular columnist for Organica and serves as a poetry editor for The Texas Observer. She currently resides in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and son.

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