Current Read: Poetry 2: What Have You Lost? : Poems selected by Naomi Shibab Nye

 Orange Juice


It was dark
when my father drank
orange juice from the container.
I would hear the creaking
of his footsteps
in the hallway
past my bedroom
and the suction
of the refrigerator door
give way to his private
love of sweets in
the quiet night.

I longed to know
the sweetness
of my father, and
would rise to meet him,
my feet bare
on the cold kitchen floor, and
listen for clues.


-Lisa Ruth Shulman

My Father in the Stacks


For hours in his study he'd disappear
into the private chambers of a story.
Walls within walls, his bookshelves
dwarfed me. His large oak desk
held the family photo, tall, straight stacks,
and the yellow plots of legal pads.
Sometimes he'd pass me a book
if my hands were clean.

I've grown tall like my father
wandering dark hours of the afternoon
in fields of print, rustling pages.
Back at home at the university
where my father teaches, I walk
through the library on the seventh floor,
no call number in mind.
I turn the aisle and he is there.
In the silence of so many books,
we do not what to say.
I forgive our unwritten lives,
the years we haven't read/
We pass each other, my hands are clean.

- David Hassler.