Rain..."He wanted to go inside them / and live..." Naomi Shihab Nye

by Emily Carr

I woke up thinking it was raining and (almost) simultaneously realizing, yet again, that air conditioners drip into the airspace.

A thing is not what it seems, sometimes, anyway. Same with a person or a kid who is a person, although it is not so much subject matter or convergence of this poem and my morning brain rattle as the fact that I felt an urge to protect after reading Naomi Shihab Nye's "Rain."

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