Carried by a Poem
Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Shimmering abundance, yes. Clouds shift across the sky; this morning’s light is turning to shadows. Rain is coming. The garden pathways are covered with leaves, and my friend the willow drops slender twigs on the steps up to the kitchen door.
Last night I sat in bed, reading and listening to the wind. Contentment feels like this, winter nights and the company of books. Today’s poem, by Naomi Shihab Nye, reminds me that words have weight. They have substance.
You Know Who You Are Why do your poems comfort me, I ask myself. Because they are upright, like straight-backed chairs. I can sit in them and study the world as is it too were simple and upright. Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words and not one of them can save me. Your poems come in like a raft, logs tied together, they float. I want to tell you about the afternoon I floated on your poems all the way from Durango Street to Broadway. Fathers were paddling on the river with their small sons. Three Mexican boys chased each other outside the library. Everyone seemed to have some task, some occupation, while I wandered uselessly in the streets I claim to love. Suddenly I felt the precise body of your poems beneath me, like a raft, I felt words as something portable again, a cup, a newspaper, a pin. Everything happening had a light around it, not the light of Catholic miracles, the blunt light of a Saturday afternoon. Light in a world that rushes forward with or without us. I wanted to stop and gather up the blocks behind me in this light, but it doesn't work. You keep walking, lifting one foot, then the other, saying, "This is what I need to remember" and then hoping you can. Some poems and stories, fragments and half-remembered lines, have lodged in my body. I feel them rise to the surface of awareness on days when I feel weighted by fear or exhaustion. They come to mind when I watch the sun rise over the mountains as I drive to the paddock. I wish you a week of finding and remembering words that nourish you, ones you can carry like talismans through the day. Here is a short, three minute video of Naomi Shihab Nye, speaking about her poetry:
With appreciation,
Carri.
P.S. Last week’s By Silvered Light, Endangered Language, is here.