Poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets. She lives in San Antonio and travels widely, an ambassador for poetry. Here she captures a lovely moment from her childhood.

TED KOOSER, U.S. Poet Laureate

My brother, in his small white bed,

held one end.

I tugged the other

to signal I was still awake.

We could have spoken,

could have sung

to one another,

we were in the same room

for five years,

but the soft cord

with its little frayed ends

connected us

in the dark,

gave comfort

even if we had been bickering

all day.

When he fell asleep first

and his end of the cord

dropped to the floor,

I missed him terribly,

though I could hear his even breath

and we had such long and separate lives

ahead.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Reprinted from "A MAZE ME," Greenwillow, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright Naomi Shihab Nye, whose most recent book of poetry is "You and Yours," BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry. "American Life in Poetry" appears Fridays in Northwest Life.