Naomi Shihab Nye
LITTLE FARMER
With love, to Earthdance Farm
She pulled us up the hill in a red wagon.
We rolled home with brown sacks in our laps.
Later I worked at Mueller’s Organic Farm,
the rows knew my step.
I plucked berries gently, never bruising.
They paid 5 cents a box, it felt like a lot.
All my life has had that light, square shape.
Such ruddy sunstruck pride
in the farmers named Al and Caroline,
Al loved his mounds of squash, sacks of beans,
with fierce intensity. Caroline said Nope, I only
love him. Their okra bore an essence of perfection,
ripe corn whispered inside its perfect sheaves
and drifty web of hair. You are here, it said.
You will always be here. Years later Al told me,
Your mother was the most lovely person
who ever walked up my drive, that long shiny
ponytail, those huge eyes. She asked
the best questions. That shows intelligence.
He sang me songs, lost love and lonely stars.
I had never known he played a guitar.
Why didn’t I ask more questions?
The lives spun out. He wanted me to stay.
I wish I could harvest his patience
from fifty years away. Al long dead,
his dutiful Caroline dead, their farm still
a farm though, one victory! I’d tell him
how right he was about slowness,
the path of sunlight through leaves,
how dirt has always befriended me,
birdcalls beyond,
how his shy smile, waving goodbye with a hoe,
stayed with me forever, how no tomato
was ever better than the one he held in his hand.
From The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace & Renewal, Storey Publishing, 2023. Available for purchase online.
It’s vital to look back on our lives and trace those first, formative encounters with wonder and awe. We might ask ourselves: What experiences taught us to revere the world, and showed us everyday miracles we could actually hold in our hands? As Naomi Shihab Nye reveals in “Little Farmer,” her own childhood connection to the organic farm in Ferguson, Missouri close to where she grew up planted the seeds of wonder in her—for “the rows that knew my step,” and for “the farmers named Al and Caroline,” who taught her true presence. On their land, even the okra and ripe corn whispered, “You are here . . . You will always be here,” suggesting that she would carry this place with her no matter how far away she went. By sharing so openly the lasting imprint of Earthdance Farm, which remains operational to this day (“one victory!”), Nye invites us to reflect on our own past examples of attentive, hardworking persistence. Speaking of Al, she says, “I wish I could harvest his patience/from fifty years away . . . I’d tell him/how right he was about slowness.” She ends the poem with that final image of a perfect tomato “he held in his hand,” proving that nothing is better than what’s right in front of us—sunlight, dirt, and “birdcalls beyond.” Isn’t this the work of all poets, and perhaps all humans, learning to savor the wondrous moment at hand, so that we might bring it to life again for others?
Invitation for Writing & Reflection: What are some of your earliest memories of wonder in the natural world? Was there someone in your life who showed you how to stay present to place, who gave you permission to be amazed by the everyday?
ABOUT THE POET: Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She recently served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate of the United States (Poetry Foundation). Her most recent books are Everything Comes Next, Collected & New Poems, Cast Away (Poems about Trash), The Tiny Journalist, and Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners. She also co-edited Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic, with David Hassler and Tyler Meier. Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Prize, and “The Betty Prize” from Poets House, for service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS
James Crews is the editor of several bestselling books, including The Wonder of Small Things, The Path to Kindness, and How to Love the World. He is also the author of a collection of essays, Kindness Will Save the World, available as a hardcover and audiobook. He has been featured in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, People Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and on NPR’s Morning Edition. The author of four prize-winning collections of poetry, James also leads an online writing community called The Monthly Pause (themonthlypause.com). He lives with his husband on forty rocky acres in the woods of Southern Vermont. For more info, visit: jamescrews.net
FURTHER EXPLORATION
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