Hola mi Gente,
If you’re impacted by the current big-assed snowstorm, I
hope you’re safe and warm.
Today I offer a poem (not mine) on a topic we don’t seem
to talk about enough…
* * *
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose
things,
feel the future
dissolve in a moment
like salt in a
weakened broth.
What you held in
your hand,
what you counted
and carefully saved,
all this must go so
you know
how desolate the
landscape can be
between the regions
of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of
kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a
white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.
who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest
thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense
anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail
letters and
purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.
purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.
-- Naomi Shihab Nye, from The
Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
* * *
My name is Eddie and I’m in
recovery from civilization…
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