What Have You Lost? Poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

Hello! I was going to save this post for Poetry Friday, but I can't wait -- and the nieces/little sister are coming in for Camp Buttercup starting tomorrow, so I may not be able to get back here this week! If I don't, and even if I do, Happy (early) Poetry Friday! On Friday be sure to visit Katie at The Logonauts for Roundup.

I'm excited to share with you two poems from one of this year's beach-thrift-store finds:  WHAT HAVE YOU LOST, poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye.



Waking Instructions
by Emma Mellon

Crawl ashore
to the damp beginning of day.

Forget before and after.

Allow yourself
to be spelled differently.

It will feel like falling.

It has waiting attached.

**"Allow yourself to be spelled differently." This one is going on my How To Live Your Poem list! Love!

Simple Song of Being Oneself
by Vittorio Bodini (translated from Italian by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann)

The ivy tells me: you'll never
be ivy. And the wind:
you won't be wind. And the sea:
you won't be sea.

Rags, rivers, bridal dawn
tell me: you won't be rag or river,
you won't be bridal dawn.

The anchor, the four of diamonds, the sofa bed
tell me: you won't be us,
you never have been.

And so say dream, arch, peninsula,
spiderweb, espresso machine.

The mirror says:
how can you be a mirror
if all you give  back is your own image?

Things say: try to be yourself
without us.
Spare us your love.

Delicately I flee from everything,
I try to stay alone. I find
death, fear.