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.
Because this bird is singing to me,
I belong to the wide wind,
The people far away who share
The air and the clouds.
Together we are looking up
Into all we do not own
And we are listening.
~ by Naomi Shihab Nye from "Messages from Everywhere"
