Morning Birds by Naomi Shihab Nye
bird in the branches
Sometimes I come upon a poem that perfectly reflects what I'm feeling, but I could never have expressed it so beautifully. This one is by the wise, kind, and eloquent Naomi Shihab Nye.
I have met Naomi a few times, and we've had an ongoing email correspondence for more than a decade, so I think of her as a friend...especially when her words reach my heart as these do:
“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”
The poem is from her book, Transfer, published in 2011 by BOA Editions. The title refers to all the different kinds of transfers we make in our lives from one stage of our lives to another, but the book was written in the aftermath of the death of her beloved father, Azis Shihab, and the poems are very much about love and grief.
"Missing him contains memories so intense I don't know how I will continue," she has written.
I understand. Tomorrow will mark thirty-seven years since my father died, and the yearning has never left me. It will also be my first October 12 without my mother in the world.
And yet, as Naomi says in another beautiful poem:
There’s a way not to be broken that takes brokenness to find it.
I'm not always sure how that works, but I believe it.
______
(And here I am with Naomi!)
Cyn with Naomi Shihab Nye