Naomi Shihab Nye

"I want to be someone
making music with my coming."

Back in the 1970s, I was a loyal subscriber to the quarterly magazine Power: "Personal Reflections by Youth for Youth." Of course I was thrilled when some of my poems were accepted for publication; but that happened only three times.

On a more regular basis, however, I was filled with inspiration, searching the pages of each new issue for the latest poems by Naomi Shihab, a regular contributor at the time. Hers were always my favorites, so much so that I copied them all out by hand and made my own "Collected Poetry of Naomi Shihab." Certainly she was famous to me!

Those omnipresent Blue Books of my under-grad years, ever a symbol of fraught and fretful soul searching, were never put to better use. I have them with me to this day, and the poems inside, imprinted on my memory:

I would be no one.
I would have no head, no hair, no comb.

I would be the thin mist in the air of a cold morning;
I would rise and disappear early, before the sun
and the noisy streets and everyone moving.

I would hum and greet you when you awaken,
with no words, no face, no promise but my love,
like a river.

I would be here, be here, be here invisible, forever --
when all the braver ones have gone to hide --
when all these tears have years and years been dried.

Nowadays, unlike that olden era of pen to paper,
you can easily order
Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems
by Naomi Shihab Nye (b 1952)

and read the many Shihab Nye poems
scattered throughtout my blogs: ~ QK ~ FN ~ KL
as they have been throughout my life . . .

Where are you on
your spiritual journey?"
you ask, your sharp eyes
thumbtacking the question
on my heart.

What can I say?
I am somewhere beyond "go"
I have not stopped.

Years have shown me
the idea of travelling
is a game we play with ourselves
to pretend we're not home.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

See SPIRITUAL JOURNEY,
Quotidian Kit, right - hand column,