Poetry Friday: Naomi Shihab Nye

Two Countries

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers–silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

I went looking for a poem to share with you today and found this one via Shihab Nye’s episode of On Being. I love her work, and in this time when connection looks different, this poem seemed particularly apt.

Many of us will remember being alone, and also connected, in these days. I am grateful for the technology that’s letting us talk and text and wave via Zoom and FaceTime, but you can bet I look forward to hugging my people when this is all over.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am sharing poetry here on Fridays this month, as I do every year. 

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