Naomi Shihab Nye Poems

On an island the soft hue of memory,
moss green, kerosene yellow, drifting, mingling
in the Caribbean Sea,
a six-year-old named Alfred
...

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
...

We made it from the ground-up corn in the old back pasture.
Pinched a scent of night jasmine billowing off the fence,
popped it right in.
That frog song wanting nothing but echo?
...

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,
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It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
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Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
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Some nights
the rat with pointed teeth
makes his long way back
to the bowl of peaches.
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What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?
I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV.
...

My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end.
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
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A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
...