where hate won't grow

 

 

I'm not interested in

Who suffered the most.

I'm interested in

People getting over it.

 

Once when my father was a boy

A stone hit him on the head.

Hair would never grow there.

Our fingers found the tender spot

and its riddle: the boy who has fallen

stands up. A bucket of pears

in his mother's doorway welcomes him home.

The pears are not crying.

Later his friend who threw the stone

says he was aiming at a bird.

And my father starts growing wings.

 

Each carries a tender spot:

something our lives forgot to give us.

A man builds a house and says,

"I am native now."

A woman speaks to a tree in place

of her son. And olives come.

A child's poem says,

"I don't like wars,

they end up with monuments."

He's painting a bird with wings

wide enough to cover two roofs at once.

 

Why are we so monumentally slow?

Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:

big guns, little pills.

If you tilt your head just slightly

it's ridiculous.

 

There's a place in my brain

Where hate won't grow.

I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.

Something pokes us as we sleep.

 

It's late but everything comes next.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

(19 Varieties of Gazelle)

photo by  imso gabriel