Four Poems
- Four Poems
Real Estate
Daddy picked up pamphlets at every stop.He was looking for another home, a placeto get away to. If you loseyour first home you loved so much,you may be doomed. He boughtfifty acres, mouse-ridden house,shabby barn. And kept looking.
My friend said when she was dying,"We have to put on our armor of joy."Maybe putting on another housemeant happy marriage, strong heart.If he had a real master bedroom, he mightbecome a master.
Figure out what you're searching for, cul-de-sacmature trees, sprinkler system, wooden decktotally renovated spacious floor planfantastic location, gleaming hardwood floorsexecutive style, dramatic hilltop view …
Even in the last months when all the bloodfrom the sweet haven of his olive-skinned bodycycled through a filtering machine every two dayshe was thinking hilltop view—could he see all the wayacross the ocean from there, the wrought-iron staircase,the red tiled roof? [End Page 172]
Undone
The workmen closed our street and sidewalk with striped yellowsawhorses. They noisily drilled up all four corner curbs. I noticed theirfaces—focused, intent on the task. They poured wet cement—raking,smoothing to damp slopes. Cement mixer rumbled and churned—sixmen, two days of work. Everyone detoured around them.
I could easily have gone out with a nail at sunset to engrave a moon andstar in one corner of the blank gray slab, and even if no one else noticedthe fresh cement had been inscribed, I would have known, every time Irode my bike down the smooth slope to the old gray street you oncecrossed on two feet.
It makes me glad I never had to push a wheelchair with you in it downthat slope.
Could have written your name, made a heart no one would see—metalnail file, ice pick, needle nose pliers, stick. Those were still the days Ipaused, stunned, in the middle of everything, as your goneness sweptover me.
How could you leave your desk?The telephone numbers in your black notebook, battered briefcase, cupof unsharpened pencils, your pens that never wrote very well, your littlepost-it pads? Marc, the nice librarian, his number inked on top of the pad.The last number you ever wrote. Mom cancelled your cell phone twodays after you died. I could not believe this. What if you had called us? [End Page 173]
The Chaplain Says
Naomi Shihab Nye
Your father told me, They'll be friends someday,find a way to respect one another,
but this chosen thing has got to stop.Maybe one country, maybe
two? How would you feelif someone took your home and kept it
sixty years? More apologies wouldn'thurt. All those settlements
on stolen land? Send refugeesto live in them. Stop chopping trees.
Do you know how much goodthey could do, working together?
I could tell, the chaplain said, as I weptover my father's dead body
hours before they took it away—he had a lot to say. [End Page 174]
To All the Palestinians
who die before justice is achieved …To scattered peopleexhausted land …we stand with you knowingthis wasn't fair.Everyone deservesa coming-home song.
My fatherwho lifted no weaponwho was sad all his lifebent solemnly to tasks of every daybut never abandonedthe distant shade of his favorite trees.
Far from homefamilies trading treasured pastrieshold their hands out to one anotherdespite what never happened right for them.
May they rest in a peace they never lived. [End Page 175]
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, lived in Jerusalem, and has lived in San Antonio, Texas, for many years. She is author or editor of thirty books—poetry, essays, picture books, anthologies of poetry for teens, and two novels for young readers, Habibi and Going Going.
