during the Gulf War, I remember two little third grade girls saying to me - after I read them some poems by writers in Iraq - 'You know, we never tho… - Naomi Shihab Nye

those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like...How do they maintain any shred of dignity and balance? You know those are the courageous people to me. All the-- simple people of the earth who-- don't lose their sanity in the face of-- constant-- disease in the world they live in. Who keep sending their children to school, who keep combing their children's hair. How do they do that? (2002)

So how can we continue to help-be tuning forks in some way? I guess that's the job of writers. We're tuning forks. We strike a note and it's not what we sing, so much, just that we strike this note-and then that note resonates in someone else's life, maybe they hear a harmonious note in their own lives.

I think I said this like 40 years ago in a poem — use a single word as an oar that could get you through the days, just by holding a word, thinking about it differently, and seeing how that word rubs against other words, how it interplays with other words. There’s a luxury in that kind of thinking about language and text, but it’s very basic, as well. It’s simple. It’s invisible. It doesn’t cost anything.