Fuel Quotes

“The Rider

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,
the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.
What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.
A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel: Poems

“Boy and Egg

Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear while the other children
laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,
so little yet, too forgetful in games,
ready to cry if the ball brushed him,
riveted to the secret of birds
caught up inside his fist,
not ready to give it over
to the refrigerator
or the rest of the day.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel: Poems

“as a boy stands back from his earlier self mocking it and the light of fireflies blinking against an old fence has become as sad as it is lovely because so many hands are gone by now it is not that we wanted the light to be caught      but reached for that was it”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel

“That’s how I feel about my life. I like to skirt the edges. There it is in the field. Feeding itself.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel

“We will take this word in our arms. It will be small and breathing. We will not wish to scare it. Pressing lips to the edge of each syllable. Nothing else will save us now. The word “together” wants to live in every house.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel