Fuel

by Naomi Shihab Nye

  and the squirrel gathering what it needed,

  scrambling high into the branches,

  dropping shells on his face

  as he stood under the tree looking up.

  SAD MAIL

  It’s strange to think how letters used to be letters, letting you know someone liked you, saying pleasant dull things like, How are you, we are fine, making you wish for more but not weighing you, really. Now the letters are funnels of want, requests for favors, Please do what you can, Help me get into Yaddo (where I have never been), Tell my teachers I am a good student, Don’t you think I would be excellent in that program overseas? I want to send everyone overseas. I want to be there myself, where my mail can’t find me. It’s startling to miss the sweet dim-witted reports of summers & boyfriends, journeys & pets, the scented lilac envelopes. Now the envelopes are long & white, letters begin How long it has been since we really connected & pole-vault into the request by the second paragraph. And no one ever says you have months to do this in. You have till tomorrow. I am lonely with my mail. Yesterday I went out walking before the mailman came, & the street was filled with carcasses of empty envelopes, dampened & tattered, the wings of exotic insects lost without their bodies. I wanted to bend & reclaim them, smooth them, fill them with unsigned notes, & drop them into my neighbor’s shining boxes. One at a time.

  PUBLIC OPINION

  What they say first, what they say next.

  I never saw a public walking around anyway.

  They throw it up in the air like a ball.

  No one has her hands out.

  If it hits you in the head, it hurts.

  Bouncing, it dissolves.

  I’m not worried about it.

  Give me your pants,

  and I’ll hem them.

  How long do you want them?

  OPEN HOUSE

  I work as hard as I can

  to have nothing to do.

  Birds climb their rich ladder

  of choruses.

  They have tasted the top of the tree,

  but they are not staying.

  The whole sky says,

  Your move.

  QUIET OF THE MIND

  A giant, puffed, and creamy cloud

  ignited on the right-hand horizon

  from Presidio to Marfa as the western sky

  dropped solidly into deepest blue.

  We who were driving north on that road

  pulled the car over, pulled it over

  because the grasses in their lanky goldenness

  called for standing alongside them

  while the whole sky

  held.

  Inside that lit stillness,

  we drank the swelling breath that would

  unfold on its own for months

  whenever the cities pressed us,

  rubbed us down, or called out

  people, people, people.

  RETURN

  Build my home here

  on the spot of old time.

  I’m sure I have failed you

  one thousand ways,

  you ancient clock,

  you stockpot of moments.

  Look how the first thing I do

  upon entering the house

  is remove my watch.

  It’s in your honor.

  VOCABULARY OF DEARNESS

  How a single word

  may shimmer and rise

  off the page, a wafer of

  syllabic light, a bulb

  of glowing meaning,

  whatever the word,

  try “tempestuous” or “suffer,”

  any word you have held

  or traded so it lives a new life

  the size of two worlds.

  Say you carried it

  up a hill and it helped you

  move. Without this

  the days would be thin sticks

  thrown down in a clutter of leaves,

  and where is the rake?

  POLLEN

  When weeds eat the playhouse

  what does that say about the family?

  The ball left at the base of the tree

  loses its breath shrinking into

  a stump or clump of dirt and the mole comes

  and the earth drums up into little mounds

  nobody kicks. Then what year is it?

  Maybe the door to the big house opens and a man comes out.

  A woman comes out drying her hands.

  Dinner is almost ready but there’s no one else

  to eat it. Besides the man and the woman.

  Maybe only the woman.

  Or there’s no dinner.

  The door to the playhouse stuck open not swinging

  and light comes through

  replete with pollen of cedar and foxglove

  and something else is going to be planted

  in the ditch by the road

  on the bank of the river but there will not be

  a child to tell its story. How will that change the story?

  If the fox puts on her lavender gloves just as you shut your eyes.

  If in the night something touches your sleeping cheek

  and startles you and it is the fox

  but you forget to offer her tea in the playhouse

  then what year would you be sipping?

  What would that say about the person you became?

  THE LAST DAY OF AUGUST

  A man in a lawn chair

  with a book on his lap

  realizes pears are falling

  from the tree right beside him.

  Each makes a round,

  full sound in the grass.

  Perhaps the stem takes an hour

  to loosen and let go.

  This man who has recently written words

  to his father forty years in the birthing:

  I was always afraid of you.

  When would you explode next?

  has sudden reverence for the pears.

  If a dark bruise rises,

  if ants inhabit the juicy crack,

  or the body remains firm, unscarred,

  remains secret till tomorrow . . .

  By then the letter to his father

  may be lying open on a table.

  We gather pears in baskets, sacks.

  What will we do with everything

  that has been given us? Ginger pears, pear pies,

  fingers weighing flesh.

  Which will be perfect under the skin?

  It is hard not to love the pile of peelings

  growing on the counter next to the knife.

  I STILL HAVE EVERYTHING YOU GAVE ME

  It is dusty on the edges.

  Slightly rotten.

  I guard it without thinking.

  Focus on it once a year

  when I shake it out in the wind.

  I do not ache.

  I would not trade.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the editors of the following journals where some of these poems first appeared:

  Alaska Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Cat’s Ear, Chaminade Literary Review, Chili Verde Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Fine Madness, Five Points, Grafitti Rag, Green Mountains Review, Hawai’i Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Herman Review, Hurakan, Indiana Review, The Kenyon Review, Many Mountains Moving, The New York Times, One Trick Pony, Paragraph, Poetry Kanto (Japan), Rain City Review, Rio Grande Review, Solo, Tampa Review, ¡TEX!, Two Rivers Review.

  Individual poems appeared in the following books:

  “Elevator” appeared in I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko (Simon & Schuster, 1996);

  “The Small Vases from Hebron” appeared in The Best American Poetry 1996, edited by Adrienne Rich (Scribner, 1996);

  “Darling” appeared in Contemporary American Poetry, Sixth Edition, edited by A. Poulin, Jr. (Houghton Mifflin, 1996);

  “Always Bring a Pencil” appeared in Minutes of the L
ead Pencil Club, edited by Bill Henderson (Pushcart Press, 1996);

  “The Rider” appeared in The Place My Words Are Looking For, edited by Paul B. Janeczko (Bradbury Press, 1990);

  “My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop” appeared in Written with a Spoon: A Poet’s Cookbook, edited by Nancy Fay and Judith Rafaela Sherman (Asher Publishing, New Mexico, 1995);

  “Last Song for the Mend-It Shop” appeared in Travel Alarm (a chapbook), (Wings Press, Houston, 1993);

  “The Time” appeared in Invisible, a chapbook, (Trilobite Press, Denton, 1989).

  *

  Deep thanks to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for their heartening support.

  Also I am grateful to Madison, without whom it would be Ticonderoga #1 pencils all the way.

  “Listening to Poetry in a Language I Do Not Understand” is for Shuntarō Tanikawa.

  “How Far is it to the Land We Left?” is for Aidan Artemus Gurovitsch.

  “String” is for Phyllis Theroux.

  “F” by Denise Levertov, from Poems 1968-1972. Copyright © 1970 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Naomi Shihab Nye lives in San Antonio, Texas. Her recent books include Habibi (a novel for teens), Lullaby Raft (a picture book) and Never in a Hurry (essays). Her books of poems are Red Suitcase (BOA) and Words under the Words: Selected Poems. She has edited four prize-winning anthologies of poetry for young readers and is a Guggenheim Fellow for 1997–1998.

  BOA EDITIONS, LTD.: AMERICAN POETS CONTINUUM SERIES

  Vol. 1

  The Fuhrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress

  W. D. Snodgrass

  Vol. 2

  She

  M. L. Rosenthal

  Vol. 3

  Living With Distance

  Ralph J. Mills, Jr.

  Vol. 4

  Not Just Any Death

  Michael Waters

  Vol. 5

  That Was Then: New and Selected Poems

  Isabella Gardner

  Vol. 6

  Things That Happen Where There Aren’t Any People

  William Stafford

  Vol. 7

  The Bridge of Change: Poems 1974–1980

  John Logan

  Vol. 8

  Signatures

  Joseph Stroud

  Vol. 9

  People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949–1983

  Louis Simpson

  Vol. 10

  Yin

  Carolyn Kizer

  Vol. 11

  Duhamel: Ideas of Order in Little Canada

  Bill Tremblay

  Vol. 12

  Seeing It Was So

  Anthony Piccione

  Vol. 13

  Hyam Plutzik: The Collected Poems

  Vol. 14

  Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980

  Lucille Clifton

  Vol. 15

  Next: New Poems

  Lucille Clifton

  Vol. 16

  Roxa: Voices of the Culver Family

  William B. Patrick

  Vol. 17

  John Logan: The Collected Poems

  Vol. 18

  Isabella Gardner: The Collected Poems

  Vol. 19

  The Sunken Lightship

  Peter Makuck

  Vol. 20

  The City in Which I Love You

  Li-Young Lee

  Vol. 21

  Quilting: Poems 1987–1990

  Lucille Clifton

  Vol. 22

  John Logan: The Collected Fiction

  Vol. 23

  Shenandoah and Other Verse Plays

  Delmore Schwartz

  Vol. 24

  Nobody Lives on Arthur Godfrey Boulevard

  Gerald Costanzo

  Vol. 25

  The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems

  Barton Sutter

  Vol. 26

  Each in His Season

  W. D. Snodgrass

  Vol. 27

  Wordworks: Poems Selected and New

  Richard Kostelanetz

  Vol. 28

  What We Carry

  Dorianne Laux

  Vol. 29

  Red Suitcase

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Vol. 30

  Song

  Brigit Pegeen Kelly

  Vol. 31

  The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle

  W. D. Snodgrass

  Vol. 32

  For the Kingdom

  Anthony Piccione

  Vol. 33

  The Quicken Tree

  Bill Knott

  Vol. 34

  These Upraised Hands

  William B. Patrick

  Vol. 35

  Crazy Horse in Stillness

  William Heyen

  Vol. 36

  Quick, Now, Always

  Mark Irwin

  Vol. 37

  I Have Tasted the Apple

  Mary Crow

  Vol. 38

  The Terrible Stories

  Lucille Clifton

  Vol. 39

  The Heat of Arrivals

  Ray Gonzalez

  Vol. 40

  Jimmy & Rita

  Kim Addonizio

  Vol. 41

  Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum

  Michael Waters

  Vol. 42

  Against Distance

  Peter Makuck

  Vol. 43

  The Night Path

  Laurie Kutchins

  Vol. 44

  Radiography

  Bruce Bond

  Vol. 45

  At My Ease: Uncollected Poems of the Fifties and Sixties

  David Ignatow

  Vol. 46

  Trillium

  Richard Foerster

  Vol. 47

  Fuel

  Naomi Shihab Nye