Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nyeis a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. Although she calls herself a "wandering poet", she refers to San Antonio as her home. She says a visit to her grandmother in the village of Sinjil was a life-changing experience. Nye was the recipient of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 March 1952
CountryUnited States of America
dream hands fire
Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges, they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.
might paper sometimes
Sometimes there’s no one to listen to what you really might like to say at a certain moment. The paper always listens.
mean wrinkles grows
I say yes when I mean no and the wrinkle grows.
thinking long matter
Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute. Don't reject them, let them come through when they're ready, don't think you can plan it al out. This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again. It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.
together energy
Energy is everything. Rubbing happy and sad together creates energy.
rain light weather
I'm like the weather, never really can predict when this rain cloud's gonna burst; when it's the high or it's the low, when you might need a light jacket. Sometimes I'm the slush that sticks to the bottom of your work pants, but I can easily be the melting snowflakes clinging to your long lashes. I know that some people like: sunny and seventy-five, sunny and seventy-five, sunny and seventy-five, but you take me as I am and never forget to pack an umbrella.
heart soul mind
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.
morning home might
You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.
sleep writing shoes
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.
space things-i-love gaps
I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late-there's that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantimePoetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.
country couple ignorance
maybe we try too hard to be remembered, waking to the glowing yellow disc in ignorance, swearing that today will be the day, today we will make something of our lives. what if we are so busy searching for worth that we miss the sapphire sky and cackling blackbird. what else is missing? maybe our steps are too straight and our paths too narrow and not overlapping. maybe when they overlap someone in another country lights a candle, a couple resolves their argument, a young man puts down his silver gun and walks away.
kings loneliness boys
A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn't catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.
moon night hands
Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible. You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.
stars blue orange
Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let's compare scintillation - let's share starlight.