We are looking for your laugh. Trying to find the path back to it between drooping trees. Listening for your rustle under bamboo, brush of fig leaves, feeling your step on the porch, natty lantana blossom poked into your buttonhole. We see your raised face at both sides of a day. How was it, you lived around the edge of everything we did, seasons of ailing & growing, mountains of laundry & mail? I am looking for you first & last in the dark places, when I turn my face away from headlines at dawn, dropping the rolled news to the floor. Your rumble of calm poured into me. There was the saving grace of care, from day one, the watching and being watched from every corner of the yard.

From Transfer by Naomi Shihab Nye. Copyright © 2012 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with permission of BOA Editions. All rights reserved.

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Poems by This Author

Alive by Naomi Shihab Nye Dear Abby, wrote someone from Oregon Arabic by Naomi Shihab Nye The man with laughing eyes stopped smiling Blood by Naomi Shihab Nye Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye Letters swallow themselves in seconds Daily by Naomi Shihab Nye These shriveled seeds we plant Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye The river is famous to the fish Fuel by Naomi Shihab Nye Even at this late date, sometimes I have to look up Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning How Palestinians Keep Warm by Naomi Shihab Nye Choose one word and say it over Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is Lying While Birdwatching by Naomi Shihab Nye Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye For the first time, on the road north of Tampico, Many Asked Me Not to Forget Them by Naomi Shihab Nye Where do you keep all these people? Negotiations with a Volcano by Naomi Shihab Nye We will call you "Agua" like the rivers and cool jugs San Antonio by Naomi Shihab Nye Tonight I lingered over your name, Shoulders by Naomi Shihab Nye A man crosses the street in rain Snow by Naomi Shihab Nye Once with my scarf knotted over my mouth Streets by Naomi Shihab Nye A man leaves the world The Man Whose Voice Has Been Taken From His Throat by Naomi Shihab Nye remains all supple hands and gesture The Rider by Naomi Shihab Nye A boy told me The Traveling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye When I think how far the onion has traveled The Words Under the Words by Naomi Shihab Nye My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes Two Countries by Naomi Shihab Nye Skin remembers how long the years grow Wedding Cake by Naomi Shihab Nye Once on a plane

Further Reading

Poems about Loss Affirmation by Donald Hall Ashes by Paula Meehan Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye Catastrophe Theory III by Mary Jo Bang Challenger by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon from Projection by Lidija Dimkovska Heavy Summer Rain by Jane Kenyon I Found Her Out There by Thomas Hardy I'll Try to Tell You What I Know by Martha Serpas please advise stop [I was dragging a ladder slowly over stones stop] by Rusty Morrison Some People by Wislawa Szymborska Song ["When I am dead, my dearest"] by Christina Rossetti the lost baby poem by Lucille Clifton