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Rain

A teacher asked Paul what he would remember from third grade, and he sat a long time before writing "this year sumbody tutched me on the sholder" and turned his paper in. Later she showed it to me as an example of her wasted life. The words he wrote were large as houses in a landscape. He wanted to go inside them and live, he could fill in the windows of "o" and "d" and be safe while outside birds building nests in drainpipes knew nothing of the coming rain.

Naomi Shihab Nye