Pomegranates
I thought it would be easy
but it wasn’t. It was so loud
and all of the noise was noise
I didn’t understand. Everyone speeding past
me. And all I could do was watch
and listen. I sat on a swing and watched.
It wasn’t what I was used to:
no fields, no pine trees, no salty taste
in the air. Instead, dark roads of stone.
The streets were quiet, not like back home,
and old and smokey, too. Carvings showing
pomegranates, the fruit of Granada.
-By Kate Gladhart-Hayes
Age 11, Lane County, Oregon
PARTNER POEM
The Song
From somewhere
a calm musical note arrives.
You balance it on your tongue,
a single ripe grape,
till your whole body glistens.
In the space between breaths
you apply it to any wound
and the wound heals.
Soon the nights will lengthen,
you will lean into the year
humming like a saw.
You will fill the lamps with kerosene,
knowing somewhere a line breaks,
a city goes black,
people dig for candles in the bottom drawer.
You will be ready. You will use the song like a match.
It will fill your rooms
opening rooms of its own
so you sing, I did not know
my house was this large.
—By Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
ASK THE POEMS: Pomegranates and The Song
1. How is absence of connection through language like darkness?
2. How are you exploring ways that the world can be larger than expected?
3. In what ways are you using silence to convey connection with others?
4. How do you reveal the gift of being in an unfamiliar place; the gift of unexpected perspective?
5. How do you want me to experience the fruit of art?
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