first analysis

Two Countries

Skin remembers how long the years grow when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel of singleness, feather lost from the tail of a bird, swirling onto a step, swept away by someone who never saw it was a feather. Skin ate, walked, slept by itself, knew how to raise a see-you-later hand. But skin felt it was never seen, never known as a land on the map, nose like a city, hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope. Skin had hope, that's what skin does. Heals over the scarred place, makes a road. Love means you breathe in two countries. And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass, deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own. Even now, when skin is not alone, it remembers being alone and thanks something larger that there are travelers, that people go places larger than themselves. Naomi Shihab Nye I chose to do my analysis on the Two Countries poem.  My interpretation of the poem was the skin represents someone's heart.  The poem kind of describes the wear and tear of life on the heart. How someone's experiences leave marks on their hearts, and how it effects their mindsets. "Skin remembers how long the years grow when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel of singleness" Skin remembers how long the years grow, just as someone's heart remembers all of the pain, sorrow, happiness, and joy they have ever experienced. If someone cannot feel then their heart is going to become a black hole of nothing. They will be disjointed fro the world because they will not be able to make connections with anyone. A heart is what makes people human.

"Skin had hope, that's what skin does."
The heart is the holder of every wish and dream someone has. It is the keeper of all secrets and that is what I think this line is saying.  I think this is a very beautiful poem and I truly think that she is relating the skin to the heart.  The heart has wounds that have been scarred over, healed but never forgotten. It is a road map of everyone's journey, something that can always be traced.