Hello tribe,
Anne Lamott starts her new book “Hallelujah Anyway” with this poem and I just love it.
In a world where you can be famous for nothing more than your sex tape, your secretly scripted reality show, or for lying with a straight face—this puts everything back into perspective for me.
Carry on,
xox
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Famous
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
Naomi Shihab Nye, “Famous” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, copyright © 1995. Used with permission of Far Corner Books.
