Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
Naomi Shihab Nye
(from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems)
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
Naomi Shihab Nye
(from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems)
2 comments:
Hope you have a very happy, peaceful, healthy 2021!
Love this... So real and authentic as her poems are... "So much of the year is flammable" indeed... SO many losses/absences this year with the pandemic... The virus really doesn't know that the calendar is changing, that we are entering a "new year." Hopefully we can *endure* through this pandemic, this season of suffering, that seems to know no end.
I wish you a peaceful threshold and strength to face another year...
Post a Comment