I woke up today really wanting to write and blog. I wrote what I thought was a great blog post, but a friend previewed it and said I can’t post it yet. Since I trust his judgment, I’m going to wait on that one and let it percolate. Can a blog post really percolate?
Anyway, since I want to post SOMETHING today, I’m sticking with the poetry thing. I think the world needs more poetry these days, don’t you? If you’re one of those people that doesn’t naturally love poetry, then just try reading this through twice. I have always loved this poem because it speaks to the value of sorrow. It speaks to the transformative power of sorrow and how the logical response to sorrow is its opposite.
Kindness — by Naomi Shihab Nye
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 every where
like a shadow or a friend.
