Open House

I work as hard as I can
to have nothing to do.

Birds climb their rich ladder
of choruses.

They have tasted the top of the tree,
but they are not staying.

The whole sky says,
Your move.



Naomi Shihab Nye, “Open House” from Fuel. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted by permission of The Permission Company LLC, on behalf of BOA Editions. This poem appeared in the Poetry Society of America's Poems on Wheels program.