Hello Naomi Shihab Nye

A week ago, a photographer friend introduced me to another contemporary poet and writer when he read my blogs on Mary Oliver.  I’m hooked reading quotes that I found  on the net.  Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother.

Let me quote some of her poems that really touched me:

“Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I  you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend. “

And here’s her thought on reading:

“I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else’s story, the delicious ache of a last page.”

I really could relate to her because  when I  read, I am transported to  another world –  a world of fantasy or make-belief, a world of triumph or defeat, a world of happiness or loneliness but despite all these, I am mesmerized, feeling as if I were there in one particular place, feeling as if the pain and hurts are my  own and the triumphs are a joyous celebration of life.

And here’s another line  I like:

“It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don’t have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in. ”  

I agree.

Words.

Meanings.

A jumble of lovely thoughts that fills one’s  mind and feeds one’s  soul. Again I wish I could find some of her book of poems, one I could read again and again, one I could be friends with when I feel alone.

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