After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be.  (via alzati)

(via lovefrommolly)

Source: oliviacirce

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver  (via cavum)

(via itsthebestthingtoshine)

Source: havisham

NaPoWriMo #3: I Only Write for Money

leighstein:

And for first kisses in fast cars
I drive stick through the Hollywood Hills,

shifting gears just to show off
my nail art to the palm trees.

I only write so I can afford Ryan Gosling’s
day rate and get to second base.

I write to hear the shhhh
of the hundred dollar bills

making love in my vegan alligator
hobo satchel. I write so I’ll be recognized

at airports, at Yankees games, at
all the places where the people

I’ve long hated congregate.
I write because it’s the fastest way

to get famous if you’ve already got swagger
and time to burn and lovers to leave and

songs to listen to on your way out of town
in your best imitation of a wastrel.

In which Leigh Stein gives me chills. (Happy National Poetry Month!)

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches
From “Birches” by Robert Frost (via thelifeguardlibrarian)
poetrysince1912: —James Wright, Poetry, March 1961From The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine. In the introduction, editor Christian Wiman writes: When we talk about lyric poetry we tend to think of emotional inwardness, even when the details of a given poem may be completely external. James Wright’s “The Blessing” is a classic example: the details of the natural world are rendered with a kind of inner spiritual precision that enables the poet almost, but not quite, to transcend them.
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poetrysince1912:

—James Wright, Poetry, March 1961

From The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine. In the introduction, editor Christian Wiman writes:

When we talk about lyric poetry we tend to think of emotional inwardness, even when the details of a given poem may be completely external. James Wright’s “The Blessing” is a classic example: the details of the natural world are rendered with a kind of inner spiritual precision that enables the poet almost, but not quite, to transcend them.

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong.
For such despite they cast on female wits;
If what I do prove well, it won’t advance,
They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.

Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet died on this date in 1672. She was a badass mama and the first published American poet.

(via thelifeguardlibrarian)

mymissus: suicideblonde: The Tyger written and illustrated by William Blake Ugh what a fantastically strange and talented man. The only benefit to having a terrible memory and forgetting quite frequently that William Blake is one of my favorite writers is rediscovering him some time later and remembering that William Blake is one of my favorite writers. I am such a horribly tragic nerd that the very first year I did NaNoWriMo, I wrote an historical romance speculating an affair between him and Mary Wollstonecraft, a la Velvet Goldmine for Bowie and Iggy. Yes, seriously. Anyway, consider giving “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” a try. A small piece of it is tattooed on my arm. Yes yes yes - one of my most prized possessions is a little facsimile of Songs of Innocence and of Experience I bought when I was studying abroad.
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mymissus:

suicideblonde:

The Tyger written and illustrated by William Blake

Ugh what a fantastically strange and talented man. The only benefit to having a terrible memory and forgetting quite frequently that William Blake is one of my favorite writers is rediscovering him some time later and remembering that William Blake is one of my favorite writers.

I am such a horribly tragic nerd that the very first year I did NaNoWriMo, I wrote an historical romance speculating an affair between him and Mary Wollstonecraft, a la Velvet Goldmine for Bowie and Iggy. Yes, seriously.

Anyway, consider giving “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” a try. A small piece of it is tattooed on my arm.

Yes yes yes - one of my most prized possessions is a little facsimile of Songs of Innocence and of Experience I bought when I was studying abroad.

Source: suicideblonde