I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late-there's that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantimePoetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Categorized in : Space Things I Love Gaps

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.

Naomi Shihab Nye

reading inspirational book

If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!

Naomi Shihab Nye

writing beautiful teacher

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

Naomi Shihab Nye

sorrow knows kindness

There is a place to stand where you can see so many lights you forget you are one of them.

Naomi Shihab Nye

forget-you light forget

Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

Naomi Shihab Nye

shimmer pauses abundance

Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories.

Naomi Shihab Nye

interest stories facts

As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.

Naomi Shihab Nye

perspective poetry meaningful

This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Naomi Shihab Nye

want world

Sometimes there’s no one to listen to what you really might like to say at a certain moment. The paper always listens.

Naomi Shihab Nye

paper might sometimes

... the real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to make a larger circle.

Naomi Shihab Nye

real race hero

The person you have known a long tme is embedded in you like a jewel. The person you have just met casts out a few glistening beams & you are fascinated to see more of them. How many more are there? With someone you've barely met the curiosity is intoxicating.

Naomi Shihab Nye

jewels long travel

Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let's compare scintillation - let's share starlight.

Naomi Shihab Nye

orange stars blue

Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges, they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.

Naomi Shihab Nye

fire dream hands

I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know

Naomi Shihab Nye

stronger shock flaws

Where we live in the world is never one place. Our hearts, those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us moons before we are ready for them.

Naomi Shihab Nye

mirrors moon heart

It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.

Naomi Shihab Nye

lonely stories long

Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell you a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.

Naomi Shihab Nye

shoes sleep writing

Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.

Naomi Shihab Nye

coats heavy be-good

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.

Naomi Shihab Nye

salt moments kindness

You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.

Naomi Shihab Nye

home morning might