Two Countries
Naomi Shihab Nye--1952--

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked, 
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as a 
land or the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, glaring down of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had a hope, that is what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thinks something larger 
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves. 


Naomie Shihab Nye gives voice to her experience as an 
Arab-American through poem about her heritage and place
that overflow with a humanitarian sprit. 

Reminder

Three autumns ago, he passed;
why did she keep it from me for so long?
Even her pet's death was moaned louder;
why the question hides in my throat;
a cautious balloon of fit pops,
finding answers in the lovely picture-words
of encouragement she'd send in evenings,
lest I'd fall ill, with lingering claws.

I'd seen and felt of bleakness in his empty room
when I thought of him;
like a worn feather on the snowy sand beach;
her relief, after years of caring for him who would
pay her by drinking and weeping.

Words swirl in the smoke from the chimney,
silent yet loud, brother; after that, peace;
like the gossamer of light 
in the room. all things understood. 

©Byung A. Fallgren

 

Hope within the Emptiness

the abandoned house
by the mote
with wooden fence
collapsed
daydreams

a budding tulip
eaten by
senseless animal
waits for
another spring 


©Byung A. Fallgren

Behind Stowe
  Elizabeth Bishop

I heard an elf go whistling by,
A whistle sleek as moonlit grass,
that drew me like a silver string
To where the dusty, pale moths fly,
And make a magic as they pass;
A there I heard a cricket sing.

His sing echoed through and through
The dark under a windy tree
Where glinted little insects' wings.
His singing split the sky in two.
The halves fell either side of me,

And I stood straight, bright with moon-rings.


Elizabeth bishop was only sixteen when the poem was published 
by The Blue Peniel in 1927. She was born February 8, 1911 in
Massachusetts. She won the 1956 Pulitzer prize in poetry and 
winner of the 1970 National Book award. She died October 6, 1979.