Different Ways to Pray by Naomi Shihab Nye

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,
and were happy in spite of the pain,
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.
When they arrived at Mecca
they would circle the holy places,
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America.
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
      Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones.
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh

Sincerely by Naomi Shihab Nye

The envelope, usually white and slim,
bleached as a shell we might press to our ears,
or striped along its flying borders,
sometimes pink, or brown, or puffed,
having traveled that dark space
of slots and chutes and shelves and bags,
having lost faith of finding
either name written on it
ever again, rises out of Mario's hand
into my own. Or I come home
to find it sleeping
in the black box on the slim pole.

And I am rarely equal to it.

We are visited by strangers, saints.
We are visited by the impudent question.

Who holds the knife, the small blade
in a case carved like a fish?

This slicing, this fine rip,
opens a far world, a world apart,
and I try to take it in.

Cranking the creaky door of the heart.

1.

Thank you. The articles about raising children
arrived when my child was being very difficult
and then they vanished. I am certain
they will turn up and he will be
a good boy. In the meantime,
a page describing where one might purchase
Aloha clothing in the capital city of Texas.
Should you have a need. We think of you.

2.

I am sorry I did not answer for so long
but I have been writing to poets in 68 countries
asking to print their poems in the United States.

Yes I am fine. I used to be fine.
What about you?

Each overseas envelope costs 95 cents to mail.

If someone in a far-off country wanted to print your poem
would you say No? Think of the waves and wires
this envelope must cross. The mountains and muddles.

Actually I have no trouble
with poets, only with translators and publishers,
the great go-betweens. This task has come between me
and everything else I love. Can you be patient?

3.

You say you are leaving the island.
You sound very enthusiastic about leaving the island.
Since I left the island, all I care to think about
is the island.

It must be different for you.
You grew up there.
You wear the colors of the horizon inside your bruise.

You have lived on the cliff so long,
staring off to sea dreaming of what lies
on the other side; the big land, the gasp of
rumpled cities, the flush and certainty:
we are what is happening.

May you find it. In the meantime your island
stays lodged inside me, a mint
I turn over and over with my tongue for its endless
flavor.

4.

Thank you for the books you sent which connect
quite specifically to everything I have been thinking of
for the last 12 years.

How did you know this?

We barely met. We barely brushed one another
in the flood of comings-and-goings.

I tried to think of something to send in return
but kept being distracted
by the woolen doll on my desk from Chiapas,
her pigtails tied with pink yarn.

Do you want her? She wears a look of having been
recently startled.

5.

Sometimes a new sister comes forward, or a brother,
and the mouth opens on a hello so long and wide
whole countries live inside it.

Where were you yesterday?
Each corner and tree worth telling.

Now we will have to make letters shaped like kites,
flamboyant tails ripped from rainbow cotton
knotted together, flapping on the huge ache of breeze
that rides between.

Valentine for Ernest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.