Free Fuel by Naomi Shihab Nye Page B

with an apron,
    ruffled rickrack edge.
    She believed in the screen door,
    its tiny holes letting in breeze.
    She preceded thieves and reasons for locking.
    She held on to all her paper fans.

    Her
¿Como estas?
has a heart in it.
    If I said
No good
, she would listen.

    *

    Honey how’s the little one? I see him come out
    on the porch in his red shirt
,
    pick up the hose, shoot it straight
    in the air at the bananas
.
    You got any ripe yet?
    I walk over to see the President of the United States
    at the Alamo and he don’t look like much
.
    He stand up high on a little stage and look down
    into our faces. He got that tight look
    like the curly-tail dog sit in the middle
    of the street every night when the lamps
    go on. Why you think it do that?
    I say, Hey! Hey you! Trucks!
    And it turn its head, look at me
    so up and down like I’m the one
    who crazy
.

    *

    Sometimes the grass grows so tall
    in the vacant lot beside her house.
    Fancy pink vines tie knots
    around the heads of weeds.
    She swims through the field at sundown,
    calling out to hens, cats, whoever
    might be lost in there,
    Hey! Hey you! It’s time to come home!

    And the people drifting slowly past
    in the slim envelope of light
    answer softly,
Here I am
.

HIDDEN

    If you place a fern
    under a stone
    the next day it will be
    nearly invisible
    as if the stone has
    swallowed it.

    If you tuck the name of a loved one
    under your tongue too long
    without speaking it
    it becomes blood
    sigh
    the little sucked-in breath of air
    hiding everywhere
    beneath your words.

    No one sees
    the fuel that feeds you.

WAITING TO CROSS

    One man closes his hand.
    He will not show us
    the silver buckle
    he uncovered in his garden.

    One man reads houses.
    They make sense to him,
    grammar of lights in windows.
    He looks for a story to be part of.

    One man has no friends.
    His mother is shrinking
    at a table with one chair.
    She dreams a mouse
    with her son’s small head.

    One man feels right.
    The others must be wrong.
    And the world? It does not touch him.

    One man stares hard
    at the other men’s profiles
    against the sky.
    He knows he is one of five men
    standing on a corner.

ESTATE SALE

    A crowd of strangers flies over your life
    picking out landmarks—stainless steel
    cake pan, jello mold, pastel box of
    thank you notes. Someone’s even put
    a 25-cent price tag on the coffin
    of Kleenex in the bathroom.

    I’m a prowler, unable to smile back
    at the bouyant women hired to coordinate
    this last event.

    Beside the dismantled bedframe,
    a telephone with scrawled number of
    SON DAVID EVANS taped to the side.

    You intended it to be read by someone else.
    I hope he came by often including you
    in his regular weeks, not just his holidays.

    Your angels with lace collars.
    Christmas cookie plate
    and rattled tea towels.

    How big we are, the living.

    We stomp between your flexible curtain road
    and the dictionary with a chunk torn out.

    I’m caught in the kitchen with a sadness
    flat as the icebox door.
    Considering reductions: your horizon,
    your hope. Antique wooden wardrobes
    stuffed into three tight rooms.

    Carrying the stack of blank typing paper
    and the Scrabble game with the Santa sticker
    circa 1950.
    Now we’re stuck together.

    Wooden letters click in our hands.
    We make ABLE, ADEPT .
    Someone’s JIG turns into JIGSAW .

    Someone’s HUNCH remains just that,
    though we keep flying over it from different angles,
    trying to make it larger,
    trying to give it feet or hands or another ground
    to stand on.

LOST

    notices  flutter

    from    telephone    poles

    until    they    fade

    OUR SWEET TABBY    AFRAID OF EVERYTHING

    BIG GRAY CAT           HE IS OUR ONLY CHILD

    SIBERIAN HUSKY           NEEDS HIS MEDICINE

    FEMALE SCHNAUZER      WE ARE SICK WITH WORRY

    all night I