Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Kindness, a Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

April is National Poetry Month, and you all know how much I LOVE poetry.  So, here is one of my favorites.  May you be touched deep down in your soul, and show kindness to all you meet.

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.

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.

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 everywhere
Like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab-Nye

3 comments:

Kass said...

This is so beautiful. Who is this Naomi Shihab-Nye. How did you discover her? "The tender gravity of kindness" Wow!

lori vliegen said...

beautiful poem, marie......thanks so much for sharing it with us! it's so true.....sometimes we have to go without something before we realize how blessed we were to have it in the first place.....xox, :))

S. Etole said...

and He is always with us ... in kindness and love