Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye Read Free Book Online

split.
    Comfort’s General Store burns down
    right before our neighbor’s house is robbed.
    One million acres of the Texas Panhandle
    flaming, ten thousand animals
    scorched. Three people told me
    poetry saved their lives, on the same day
    they told me this.

Hibernate
    My father’s friend Farouk
    has a dream:
    God resigned.
    And all the people took better care of one another
    and got together then
    because, well, they had to.
    Things grew really smooth.
    There was no one to blame or impress.
    Professor Brother Miguel Angel
    is healing “mexican style”
    every day of the week for free.
    He is healing “different from others.”
    He will “run away bad neighbors”
    if you ask him to. Note: he stuck his
    promotional poster on your neighbor’s house
    as well as your own.
    He will “bring back boyfriends”
    and “give names of persons.”
    Call for appointment
    night or day. Good luck for Bingo,
    too. Bingo is capitalized,
    mexican is not. I want
    brown magic this year.
    Brown dusty desert magic.
    I want peace even if it involves
    a lot of weeping and apology.
    Can you help me? Keep
    your Bingo joy, I need real
    people lighting sage sticks,
    being honest. Say disaster .
    Thank you.
    Spring feels different this year.
    It’s a bandage.
    Mountain laurel…jasmine…
    The wound keeps oozing, though.
    I keep thinking how the man who said
    100 Arabs don’t equal 1 American
    was wearing a white shirt
    and had seemed perfectly normal
    up till then.
    Favorite questions from the FBI:
    In all your travels, have you ever met
    anyone who used an assumed name?
    Uh, it is possible Abdul Faisal Shamsuzzaman
    was really Jack Smith, but how would I know?
    In all your travels, did you ever meet anyone
    who wanted to overthrow their country?
    Hmmmm, would they have announced it?
    Yes. Me. Now.
    The turtles who live with us emerge from hibernation
    on the first day of Official Spring.
    How do they know?
    And where were they for the whole iffy winter?
    In which bed of leaves did they bury
    themselves?
    On the first Official Day,
    they climbed heavily back into their old red tub
    lifting reptilian heads above water,
    blinking slowly…
    we were so ready to feed them.
    It’s awkward to be with people sometimes,
    making shapes in the air
    that feel like sense—
    I’d rather talk to J. Frank Dobie
    who died years ago.
    Lucille remembers him sitting
    in a white linen suit
    on her grandfather’s South Texas porch,
    stories spinning like spiders
    along the wooden beams…
    Homeland Security wanted to know
    what those mysterious silver objects were,
    entering my cousin’s home—
    trays of tabouleh
    covered with aluminum foil.
    Logic hibernates.
    Truth, too.
    It has been known to stay gone
    for years.

My President Went
    quail hunting
    to celebrate the advent
    of a new year.
    He didn’t kill many birds
    only five,
    but called it “lots of fun.”
    Each bird had lungs
    and fancy feathers
    and elegant strong feet.
    People who study quail
    describe their
    â€œsmall family groups,”
    how some species prefer
    to crouch and hide in tall grass
    while others
    â€œfly in the face of danger.”
    There are many things
    my president might have done
    after months of killing and sorrow
    but he chose to take a gun
    into the fields.
    Note: I wrote this poem before my vice-president shot his friend in the face while quail hunting in south Texas. The above poem also happened in Texas. Sometimes when young writers ask what triggers poems, I could just hold up a daily newspaper, which still costs fifty cents except on Sundays in many cities.

Texas Swing Low
    JESUS IS THE KING OF CUERO
    trumpets a billboard on Highway 87 South.
    I wonder, is it enough,
    would He be glad to hear this?
    And what about Smiley and Pandora,
    is He just a prince there, or perhaps
    a backup band? And Stockdale’s signs
    seem devoted to the Internet.
    In brisk December, Victoria and