What kind of advice are people giving you?
Do you agree with what they say? Why not try to write a poem about what other people think is a good idea and how you respond to it. In the poem “Advice” by Naomi Shihab Nye, the poet gets some advice from her great great aunt. She doesn’t actually say whether or not she will do it, but she does write about her response to what her relative says.
Advice
–Naomi Shihab Nye
My great-great-aunt says to plant a tree.
Any nut, she says. She says and says again.
She planted her tree in 1936.
Ahead of us the years loom, forests without histories.
Our hands want to plant something that will bloom tomorrow.
This is too vague, this deep root of ten thousand days.
Don’t forget, she says, but we are driving away.
Behind us she brushes a leaf from her step,
sinks a little deeper into the soil of sleep
that has been settling beneath her like a pillow since birth.