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Tag Archives: Naomi Shihab Nye

Friendship and A Poem

I have been thinking about friendship this evening and how important it is to our well-being and our peace of mind. We have our lovely friends from Ukraine around at the moment, really close friendships made in such a short time last November and which have been renewed this week.

Tonight I share with you a beautiful poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. I have shared it before but feel it is good for today too. .

Red Brocade

The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be
such good friends
you don’t care.

Let’s go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.

No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.

I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.

1 Comment

Posted by mybeautfulthings on January 25, 2023 in community, Postaday 2023, Uncategorized

Tags: loyalty, Naomi Shihab Nye, Red Brocade by Naomi Shihab Nye, Slava Ukraine

Kindness

30 Oct

I’ve shared poems by Naomi Shihab Nye before. I love her writing. This is a real experience that she is writing about. It all comes down to kindness, again.

“Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well — one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.

“Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next toher. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons justfor the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — from her bag — and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands — had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate — once the crying of confusion stopped— seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I looked up Mamool Cookies as they are new to me and found this delicious sounding recipe which I shall try out soon.

10 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on October 30, 2021 in Postaday2021, Uncategorized

Tags: Mamool cookies, Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness, Bluebells and A Cornish Pasty

31 Mar

It is National Kindness Day. One little act of kindness I managed today was to call someone’s attention to the fact that he had dropped his car keys and not noticed. I took some books to the charity shop. I was kindly looked after when I forgot to take my diary to a meeting – C sent her son as a runner for me and back he came with my diary in moments. Her daughter had been baking Hot Cross Buns and she gave us one each – delicious. Kindness makes the world go round. Here is a beautiful poem that I have shared before but you may not all have read it.

Kindness by Naomi Shibab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Coming home from town, down Lovers’ Lane I came across the first Bluebells.

I was on my own for lunch today and I treated myself to a small Cornish Pasty!

4 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on March 31, 2017 in Beauty, Food, Kindness, nature, Photography, poetry, postaday2017

Tags: Naomi Shihab Nye

Primroses, Naomi Shihab Nye and Jabberwocky

27 Jan

I will resolve the photos issue over the weekend. In the meantime, here are two poems for your delectation and an old photo of Primroses in our garden as we have lots in flower today despite the cold.

I love this one for its understanding of loneliness. I love the writing of Naomi Shihab Nye. If you put her name into my search you will see that I have chosen poems by her before. Kindness, is my favourite.

The Rider – Naomi Shihab Nye

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.

Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll, is simply a logophile’s dream – all those lovely made up words that fit into the context so that the reader somehow knows what they all mean.

Jabberwocky

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

      Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.