Rain -- Naomi Shihab Nye

Guest poem sent in by Nelson JS Santhosh

(Poem #1379) Rain A teacher asked Paul what he would remember from third grade, and he sat a long time before writing "this year somebody tutched me on the sholder" and turned his paper in. Later she showed it to me as an example of her wasted life. The words he wrote were large as houses in a landscape. He wanted to go inside them and live, he could fill in the windows of "o" and "d" and be safe while outside birds building nests in drainpipes knew nothing of the coming rain. -- Naomi Shihab Nye

Comments:

I don't know much about the poetic merits of this modern piece. But what I do
know is that Naomi takes a stereotype, turns it upside down and shows what
strange waters can flow from the most unexpected of places if you can see
them. I have always known that a dunce is not so a dunce if you don't look
for them. So many of these so-called "dunces" were some of the best friends
I had, guys who would gang up & beat seniors who ragged me while
"intellectuals" watched in fear. Whenever teachers slapped these "dunces", I
would always want to scream at them, but I had to quietly satisfy myself
with splashing ink on their clean shirts and sarees when they weren't
looking. That was once upon a time, but I still fill the windows of my "o"s
and "d"s and don't even leave out the tiny half-moon of "e" ;-)

Nelson

Biography:
  [broken link] http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/NYEnaomishihab.html