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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis,...
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FURTHER READING
Poems About Home
9773 Comanche Ave.
by David Trinidad
Notebook of a Return to the Native Land [excerpt]
by Aimé Césaire
Birthplace
by Michael Cirelli
Dusting
by Marilyn Nelson
Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
by Billy Collins
He Foretells His Passing
by F. D. Reeve
Home is so Sad
by Philip Larkin
My House, I Say
by Robert Louis Stevenson
On the Disadvantages of Central Heating
by Amy Clampitt
Otherwise
by Jane Kenyon
Proclamation
by Stuart Dischell
Psalm of Home Redux
by David Lee
Steppingstone
by Andrew Hudgins
Sysiphusina
by Shira Dentz
Te Deum
by Charles Reznikoff
The Afternoon Sun
by C. P. Cavafy
The Bedroom
by Paula Bohince
The Cabbage
by Ruth Stone
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
by W. B. Yeats
This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
Untitled [I grew up in North Adams]
by Brenda Iijima
Wonder Cabinet
by Tina Chang
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Daily

 
by Naomi Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips
 
These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares
 
These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl
 
This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out
 
This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky
 
This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it
 
The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world






Naomi Shihab Nye, “Daily” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
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