Hello Friends,
Today's poem comes from a somewhat unexpected location: an order from the United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit filed yesterday, agreeing to vacate an injunction while Gavin Grimm's case proceeds. Gavin Grimm, as you may recall, is a young transgender man who just needs to be able to use the boys' bathroom at his high school. It must be National Poetry Month, because Senior Judge Davis invokes the work of the Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye in the concurring opinion to the court order!
You can read the whole (short! worth a read!) court document as a PDF here; Nye's poem also appears below. Many thanks to Emilie Eagan for sharing this court doc and explaining it to me on Facebook!
Enjoy.
Ellen
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
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Poet Naomi Shihab Nye was also featured for Poem-A-Day April 29, 2016, Poem-A-Day April 17, 2015, and Poem-A-Day April 2, 2014.