Evan+Cohen

"A poem starts with delight and ends with wisdom" - Robert Frost

Ode to the family

Pancakes Sizziling bacon Scrambled eggs You wake up and sense that sweet symphony of smells Head down stairs and see your mom Shes waiting smiling You get older Head down stairs and see your mom Its not bacon anymore its money for lunch at school Shes still smiling You get older Drive over to her house Its not money for food, its money for college Shes still smiling You get older You take a plane to see her She gives you money for your wedding and buys you a house Shes still smiling You grow older, still She dies You have a child of your own He comes down for pancakes one day You're smiling Praise poem Praise to the band that never stops The band that fights back The band that never changes The band that’s always new The band that will last forever There is a band A iron band A band that will never break This band binds so many This band can tear others apart This band stated so so small This band shot so high

RIff Is this but a dream within a dream I open my eyes I see an ocean vast and deep The ocean is in the sky and the sky is on earth A whale sails over me And a plane goes under me The water twists and arcs off The clouds stem into the water Something changes now The sky is taking all the water The ocean slowly shrinks in till there is nothing The balance has tipped All that remains is land Dessert land I stand now in the middle Between heaven and earth Is this but a dream within a dream

Sonnet

That strange feeling you get sometimes

You, You’re the one that plauges me You’re the one that makes me doubt I know what your planning and it wont work, see The person that brings pain to my heart like a drought I’m one step ahead of it I know all the moves Stop now before everything turns to shit You will lose Why ,why did any of this happen How did this all start It was different then You and I were the smart Maybe its just not ment to be I guess we will have to wait and see

Naomi Shihab Nye

Blood by Naomi Shihab Nye

"A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands," my father would say. And he'd prove it, cupping the buzzer instantly while the host with the swatter stared.

In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. I changed these to fit the occasion.

Years before, a girl knocked, wanted to see the Arab. I said we didn't have one. After that, my father told me who he was, "Shihab"—"shooting star"— a good name, borrowed from the sky. Once I said, "When we die, we give it back?" He said that's what a true Arab would say.

Today the headlines clot in my blood. A little Palestinian dangles a toy truck on the front page. Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root is too big for us. What flag can we wave? I wave the flag of stone and seed, table mat stitched in blue.

I call my father, we talk around the news. It is too much for him, neither of his two languages can reach it. I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, to plead with the air: Who calls anyone civilized? Where can the crying heart graze? What does a true Arab do now?

Snow by Naomi Shihab Nye

Once with my scarf knotted over my mouth I lumbered into a storm of snow up the long hill and did not know where I was going except to the top of it. In those days we went out like that. Even children went out like that. Someone was crying hard at home again, raging blizzard of sobs.

I dragged the sled by its rope, which we normally did not do when snow was coming down so hard, pulling my brother whom I called by our secret name as if we could be other people under the skin. The snow bit into my face, prickling the rim of the head where the hair starts coming out. And it was a big one. It would come down and down for days. People would dig their cars out like potatoes.

How are you doing back there? I shouted, and he said Fine, I’m doing fine, in the sunniest voice he could muster and I think I should love him more today for having used it.

At the top we turned and he slid down, steering himself with the rope gripped in his mittened hands. I stumbled behind sinking deeply, shouting Ho! Look at him go! as if we were having a good time. Alone on the hill. That was the deepest I ever went into the snow. Now I think of it when I stare at paper or into silences between human beings. The drifting accumulation. A father goes months without speaking to his son.

How there can be a place so cold any movement saves you.

Ho! You bang your hands together, stomp your feet. The father could die! The son! Before the weather changes.

Two Countries by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel of singleness, feather lost from the tail of a bird, swirling onto a step, swept away by someone who never saw it was a feather. Skin ate, walked, slept by itself, knew how to raise a see-you-later hand. But skin felt it was never seen, never known as a land on the map, nose like a city, hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does. Heals over the scarred place, makes a road. Love means you breathe in two countries. And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass, deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own. Even now, when skin is not alone, it remembers being alone and thanks something larger that there are travelers, that people go places larger than themselves.

Statement

Throughout this whole course I’ve found that poems can express a deep emotion that cannot be said otherwise. Poetry is the music of the heart. It is a very amazing thing that can be expressed by anyone. Through this marking period it even helped me work through something. It is at its base the outlet of the soul and heart and without it the world would be a very bleak place. I never noticed in till this period but it is everywhere. It is music, writing , Speech , And interactions. It is everywhere and im a happier person to know this.

Poet Naomi Shihab Nye is a fantastic poet. She truly understands the plight of the Arab people. She expresses her feelings through her poetry so well that you can even identify with the Arab peoples problems.

In the poem Blood, Naomi says, “A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in His hands," My father would say. And he'd prove it, Cupping the buzzer instantly While the host with the swatter stared”

This thought gives a feeling of understanding and makes you reflect upon the past of Arabs. At another point in the poem Naomi says, “I call my father, we talk around the news. It is too much for him, Neither of his two languages can reach it.”

This line simply means that the Arab people have had a great atrocity done to them and that it is unexplainable in any language. .