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Gratefulness
She is holding the book close to her body, carrying it home on the cracked sidewalk, down the tangled hill. If a dog runs at her again, she will use the book as a shield.
She looked hard among the long lines of books to find this one. When they start talking about money, when the day contains such long and hot places, she will go inside. An orange bed is waiting. Story without corners. She will have two families. They will eat at different hours.
She is carrying a book past the fire station and the five and dime.
What this town has not given her the book will provide; a sheep, a wilderness of new solutions. The book has already lived through its troubles. The book has a calm cover, a straight spine.
When the step returns to itself, as the best place for sitting, and the old men up and down the street are latching their clippers,
she will not be alone. She will have a book to open and open and open. Her life starts here.
Reprinted from Fuel: Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye ( BOA Editions Ltd., 1998) by kind permission of the poet.
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