"Every day as a wide field, every page," by Naomi Shihab Nye

1

Standing outside
staring at a tree
gentles our eyes

We cheer
to see fireflies
winking again

Where have our friends been
all the long hours?
Minds stretching

beyond the field
become
their own skies

Windows doors
grow more
important

Look through a word
swing that sentence
wide open

Kneeling outside
to find
sturdy green

glistening blossoms
under the breeze
that carries us silently

2

And there were so many more poems to read!
Countless friends to listen to.
We didn’t have to be in the same room —
the great modern magic.
Everywhere together now.
Even scared together now
from all points of the globe
which lessened it somehow.
Hopeful together too, exchanging
winks in the dark, the little lights blinking.
When your hope shrinks
you might feel the hope of
someone far away lifting you up.
Hope is the thing ...
Hope was always the thing!
What else did we give each other
from such distances?
Breath of syllables,
sing to me from your balcony
please! Befriend me
in the deep space.
When you paused for a poem
it could reshape the day
you had just been living.

+ Naomi Shihab Nye

On one level, this is a poem about the power of poetry: the way, say, Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers” can become a gift of hope across time and space, reshaping the day the reader’s just been living. But at the same time, this is also a meditation on the “great modern magic” of the printed word itself: how it can connect us around the planet, bring us together, help form friendships across all kinds of distances, “everywhere together now.”

Written words have been doing this for centuries, of course, all the way back to those earliest libraries, those writings our ancestors deemed to be most beautiful and useful and important to living fully human lives. They treasured them, called them “scripture” (the word, “scripture,” just means “writings”), and passed them down, generation to generation.

And whenever we read them, we can connect: with our ancestors, with each other, with the world around us, the trees and the blinking fireflies and the wildflowers in the fields. And looking forward, we can connect with our descendants, too, the ones who will come after us and pause for these same beautiful, useful, important words, these same calls to change our minds, to gentle our eyes, to be lifted up by someone somewhere with a glimmer of hope, reshaping the day we’ve just been living. Such words can and do change lives. For it’s all one thing: the poem, the passage, the day, the field.