Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye Read Free Book Online Page A

Goliad
    pray barbeque will come around again
    on the Sunday grill.
    New holiday trend in coastal bend:
    bare wooden crosses in bare front yards.
    But isn’t that Easter?
    Jesus doesn’t get a lot of say.
    Jesus is the king of the toy box.
    Jesus misses the old days.
    A lone ostrich stands
    in a windswept overgrown brown field
    behind the faded EXOTICS sign
    tacked to her fence.
    INFO ON HUNTING it says.
    Then a telephone number she can’t dial
    from this life or the next.

From an Island
    One quick blip of Internet
    After days of disconnection
    Streak of startling lines
    Train blown up in India
    Someone famous dies
    Guerilla actions
    Military movements
    Bridges bombed
    Buckets and bags of sadness
    Don’t want
    Don’t want to know
    any of it
    Want any?
    No

The White Cat
    I never heard his name. Does he have a name?
    Â 
    Right before I rose to give a public lecture in Cairo, in a room far too fancy for a simple person like myself—ornate carvings in the ceiling, Oriental rugs, fine intricate windows—a white cat walked confidently down the center aisle of the hall and stepped onto the platform at the front, where I was being introduced. He looked at me, with an “Ah, there you are!” look and sat right beside me while I gave my talk. I had looked up the word “lecture” in the dictionary beforehand and discovered the source of the quiver in my stomach—“lecture” means something stern someone gives you, a life lesson sort of thing. Also, a formal reproof, a reprimand.
    No thanks.
    I didn’t have that. I had scrambled bits and pieces, poems, quotes, a weird outfit, bits of paper written on by 8-year-olds, and a vagrant white cat. Somehow the cat—most pure discourse offered that afternoon—never entered the comments I made to the audience, which in retrospect seems strange. It is so easy to make a joke out of something right next to you. But there was a sanctity about him. There was also the chance I wasthe only one seeing him. He seemed ghostly and I felt quite disembodied and no one else was looking at him . He just sat there, then left at the end of the talk, stepping neatly out of the room. I did not see him for the next week. Dodging all over Cairo in wild taxicabs and the underground Metro, riding a fellucca sailboat on the Nile at sundown, stomping here and there, I saw many other cats (Cairo is famous for cats) but not that one. Till I was preparing to leave the school campus where I had worked—over by one of the security stations (where only days before I had a slight fracas with a security agent who wanted to hold on to my passport, which I did not like— What if he took off with it? What if I needed identification while on campus? ), the same white cat rose out of some low bushes, sleepily, and stepped over the cobblestones daintily to press against my legs.
    Â 
    In two simple acts of movement, he welcomed me to campus and told me farewell. It is difficult to predict what our finest moments will be, but we know when they happen.

Ducks in Couples
    Four pairs of ducks
    Swimming in strong circles
    In the lake
    Heads down
    Kicking hard
    Four perfect clots of spinning duck
    In perfect harmonic movement
    Trying to lift the bits of tasty debris
    From the bottom of the lake
    I didn’t know this at first
    Thought a mating ritual might be underway
    But discovered later what they were doing
    On that day when human beings in the world
    Continued to kill one another
    Because their imaginations
    Were broken sticks
    Without any feathers

Campaigning Door to Door
    Maybe we will not
    vote
    no candidate is worth US
    we are
    patriotic Americans
    guarding our precious American        gloom
    pinned to our screens
    and incomplete yard projects
    Who? BEAT IT!
    When is
    early voting?      No      I did not
    think about it   yet    I have a lot
    on my mind
    You can’t