In Naomi Shihab Nye’s first volume of poems, Different Ways to Pray, she writes, “My grandfather told me I had a choice./Up or down, he said. Up or down./He never mentioned east or west.” A compiling of life’s choices, and the decision to fulfill them all, comprise a sort of ars poetica for Nye. This restless strain, seeking to encompass more than the poet sees around her, runs through Nye’s words and those of her speakers, across continents and generations.
She calls herself a “wandering poet,” and, growing up in St. Louis, Jerusalem and San Antonio, she has spread her own roots wide. Nye writes with a deep affection for people and places, while always remaining conscious of the social, spatial, and personal rifts that tear us apart, and keeping an eye toward the volcano in whose shadow we all live, telling it soothingly, “We would be happy if you slept forever.” William Stafford has said that Nye’s poems “combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight,” while the The Grand Rapids Press adds, “When she exhales, the world becomes different. Better.” (the poetry center, smith college)
For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15
by Naomi Shihab Nye
There is no stray bullet, sirs.
No bullet like a worried cat
crouching under a bush,
no half-hairless puppy bullet
dodging midnight streets.
The bullet could not be a pecan
plunking the tin roof,
not hardly, no fluff of pollen
on October’s breath,
no humble pebble at our feet.
So don’t gentle it, please.
We live among stray thoughts,
tasks abandoned midstream.
Our fickle hearts are fat
with stray devotions, we feel at home
among bits and pieces,
all the wandering ways of words.
But this bullet had no innocence, did not
wish anyone well, you can’t tell us otherwise
by naming it mildly, this bullet was never the friend
of life, should not be granted immunity
by soft saying—friendly fire, straying death-eye,
why have we given the wrong weight to what we do?
Mohammed, Mohammed, deserves the truth.
This bullet had no secret happy hopes,
it was not singing to itself with eyes closed
under the bridge.
From You and Yours (CBOA Editions, 2005)