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Thursday
Oct072010

Thankful Thursday: In Waiting

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me in Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places & things.

My head and heart feel a bit brittle this week. I am waiting to chip, waiting to feel the appreciation buried a bit too deep. In the meantime, I am thankful for:

• Letters
The world is full of paper. 
Write to me.

— Agha Shahid Ali from "Stationery"

I love long, complicated, searching-the-heart letters. In a pinch, an email or Facebook message will appease. But really, I pine for pen on paper, words folded to fit an envelope that travels miles to find me.

• Kindness
On a hotel marquee I find wise words:
Be kind to unkind people, they need it the most.

And that reminds me of one of my favorite poems. I am thankful to have favorite poems, and to share them with others, who may (in a letter ?) say, Yes, I feel that way, too. And then suddenly, we are not alone, not brittle, waiting.

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
from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems



Reader Comments (2)

Love this poem--new to me. Thanks!

October 9, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterJeanne

Oh Jeanne, so glad you like the poem. And, if you don't already know her work, do seek it out! I think you will like her poems.

October 10, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterdrew

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