Discover Poetry: A Garden of Verse

The Poetry Society of America has partnered with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to create sculptural, audio-visual poetry experiences in the Discovery Garden. These annual winter-season installations invite children, families, and caretakers to pay deeper attention to their surroundings. (Photo above: Peter Slattery/Brooklyn Botanic Garden).

In November 2024, the Poetry Society of America partnered with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to place a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, the award-winning author and Young People’s Poet Laureate (19–21), in the Discovery Garden. This colorful, sculptural installation in the southwest corner of the garden is accompanied by an interactive audio exhibit featuring nature sounds evoked by Nye‘s poem.

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.


“Open House” by Naomi Shihab Nye from Fuel. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Reprinted by permission of The Permission Company LLC, on behalf of BOA Editions.