That damn Tai Chi, and a poem

“I’m done here. I’ve done what I came to do. I just want to go. I’m tired.” Margie often says this. I say yes, that’s what you want. It’s perfectly reasonable to want that. I brought you a poem today.

“Oh goody! Who wrote it?”

“Naomi Shihab Nye.” 

“Why so many names?”

“Shihab was her father’s name. Nye is her husband’s name.” 

“But what’s her name?” 

“Naomi. It’s a poem about a man holding his son on his shoulder.”

“Is it her child?”

“No, just a man she saw somewhere. She wrote a poem about it.”

“Does the child have his father’s name?”

“I don’t know. It’s a poem about holding a child, any child, very lovingly on your shoulder.” 

“OK, but it seems to me we should know whose name is involved.”

I’ll include the poem below. After I read it to her, Margie was very pleased. She said, "You hold me that way." She smiled and closed her eyes for a while. When she opened her eyes, she started again on today’s refrain, “I’m done here. I raised my children, they’re all on their own. It’s like I’m the cake pan, they’re the cake, and they’re fully baked. I want to go now.” 

I tried a new approach: “Margie, why do you think you're staying here so long?”

“I wonder. How old am I?”

“Ninety-seven.” 

“That's very old. I think it’s that damn Tai Chi. I did Tai Chi three times a week for years and years. That’s why I’m so damn healthy.” 

“What did it feel like, doing Tai Chi?”

She demonstrated, laughing, She had tied her hair back with a shoestring, and I noted how she always fixes herself up for our dates. “I don’t remember how to do Tai Chi, but it was sort of like this.” She waved her hands slowly in front of her face until she was almost in a trance. 

"I had a great time doing it, but if I had known what I know now….”

Here’s the poem:

SHOULDERS

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye.