How Do I Know When a Poem Is Finished?
Naomi Shihab Nye
When you quietly close
the door to a room
the room is not finished.
It is resting. Temporarily.
Glad to be without you
for a while.
Now it has time to gather
its balls of gray dust,
to pitch them from corner to corner.
Now it seeps back into itself,
unruffled and proud.
Outlines grow firmer.
When you return,
you might move the stack of books,
freshen the water for the roses.
I think you could keep doing this
forever. But the blue chair looks best
with the red pillow. So you might as well
leave it that way.
From Honeybee (Greenwillow Books, 2008) by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Naomi Shihab Nye
When you quietly close
the door to a room
the room is not finished.
It is resting. Temporarily.
Glad to be without you
for a while.
Now it has time to gather
its balls of gray dust,
to pitch them from corner to corner.
Now it seeps back into itself,
unruffled and proud.
Outlines grow firmer.
When you return,
you might move the stack of books,
freshen the water for the roses.
I think you could keep doing this
forever. But the blue chair looks best
with the red pillow. So you might as well
leave it that way.
From Honeybee (Greenwillow Books, 2008) by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Naomi Shihab Nye is a Arab-American poet who writes profound poetry about daily life and daily experience from the perspective of an Arab-American women who has lived in the US, in Ramallah in Jordan, in the Old City in Jerusalem, and in San Antonio, Texas.
Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, Shihab Nye writes poetry that springs from an Arab heart living in America.
Her poetry features regularly on this blog. Previous blogs featuring here poetry are here.
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