Henry’s Desk (For Henry David Thoreau)

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Four thin legs
on a standing plank
Lift the lid
What lived inside
this brown green wood
Your pencils
Your quills
Patient words waiting
to emerge

What would you say
of this brazen time?
Greed and seizure
Dominant bravado
Cruelty as calling card
It’s all muchness
Way too much

Henry
You and your simplicity
carried me
through the last years of high school
my fear and trembling evaporated
in light of your words
you riveted my hope
We could be otherwise
I lived through chatter
at lunchroom tables
needing to get back to you
in the library
on the shelf
Hard to tell others
what you meant to me

a little crazy sounding
like having a boyfriend
in another century

Forever needing your affirmation
translated into German
(I was struggling with German)
weniger aber besser
LESS BUT BETTER
needing your humble hut
in the woods
your body of water
your precious aloneness

Years later
snowed into Concord
schools closed
I trudged
through blizzard drifts

to the museum
miraculously open
to find your desk.
still standing
still steady
still echoing
your signature
across the bottom
of the postcard
as across
our lives

Thank you for reminding us
we don’t have to go where
anyone else goes
think like they think
tidal waves of opinion
battering rocks

We hold your conviction
It’s a daily challenge
Lonely for the idealists
we used to be

But look at your desk!