Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change

Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change

is train tracks. She’s sure of it.

The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery

by the side, but not the tracks.

I’ve watched one for three years, she says,

and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow.

Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track

near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train

is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.

The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street

butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.

The widow in the tilted house

spices her soup with cinnamon.

Ask her what doesn’t change.

Stars explode.

The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.

The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound

but when it goes away, shrinking back

from the walls of the brain,

it takes something different with it every time.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Naomi Shihab Nye (born March 12, 1952) is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she lives in San Antonio, Texas.


There are times, I think of life as a train track and we as trains traveling down the track at ever increasing speed. Clickety-Clack the years go by, faster and faster until the train track suddenly stops at least in this life. The scenery goes by at first slowly, so slowly that when you sit in the school yard swing you think it is not moving at all and you ache for it to move because you want things to begin, desperately at least for me, to begin. Then it does at breakneck speed.

Time came after many years when retirement began. The train was still moving, but I could watch the trees, the farm houses, rivers that flowed by so slowly under bridges and sometimes under the train, buildings that had people in the yards but most time no one around. I could even see prisons and I remembered them very clearly because they were the only places where people were crowded in the walled up yards, all wearing the same cotton wide pants and matching shirts and looking at the train as if it was an alien invention because they were not on it.

Then as if life was a trickster hiding around a corner, it springs out and surprises you with options and choices or maybe none at all but changes in which you stand there completely astonished. I actually thought my adventures were over. A smile and a wink and then another adventure begins, even when it seems life is waning.

I chose this poem( with some tribulation as it is copyrighted but I have no readers so it should be alright and if the poet sees this I am sorry but it fit so well. I derive no money for this blog in case that makes a difference.) because it fit the situation so well. I was offered a job to teach at an university in Korea and I accepted at a salary that is not bad. It is a very honorable national university and I was requested there by one important student. I had to wait until all of the paper work went through such as a background check, my transcripts, someone to watch my pets and house, and now the final VISA. I am going for sure now.

Now, for a completely new adventure in another place.