All day a boy plunges his hands into his pockets.
Tickets, tape, crystallized stones, a two-dollar bill.

He will not wear pants without pockets.
It is a point of honor.

He sleeps as deeply as the crackle of the burning log,
the breath of the far-flung sea.

Where are you world? Don’t do anything
while I’m not paying attention.

Reprinted from Fuel: Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye ( BOA Editions Ltd., 1998) by kind permission of the poet.